Boy on a bike

Tuesday photos

2012-01-31T21:20:00.000+11:00

Sheesh! You write something, go away on holidays and come back to find all hell has broken loose. Gab sent Andrew Bolt a tip off about a recent post, and next thing you know, I'm flooded with comments. Whilst I'm out in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than a phone with an intermittent signal.

Many years ago, I was trained in the operation of "The prick". No, that wasn't sex education - it was a radio that was often no better than two tin cans connected with broken string. You could never get a signal out of the bloody things when you needed one, so some poor sap would be tasked with climbing the nearest suitable tree in the hope of restoring comms. That all came back to me last week, when I'd have to climb a certain hill in order to find out what was happening back in the blogsphere. I could read comments, post the odd comment elsewhere, but I wasn't going to sit down on a log and try to write a few posts. That would just have to wait.

And then I returned to the Big Smoke to find that in defiance of Tim Flannery, the grass had refused to die (as it normally does in summer) and was as green and lush and tall as a Borneo jungle. The tomatoes had also decided to ripen, and one thing you don't do with ripe tomatoes is leave them for another day. I've been mowing, harvesting, roasting, washing, cleaning, feeding the kids and helping get them ready for their return to school. Oh, and I had to go to work as well.

But things have settled down a bit, so posting may return to normal soon.

The harbour this morning - over on the far right, there is even a bloke in a kayak.

The evening rush hour - 15 of us fighting to get through when the lights went green.

Monday was a stinker of a day - it was 35 degrees when I rode home, and about 75% humidity. When I got home, I ran a cold bath and lay in it for a good half an hour to cool down. If we'd had enough ice cubes in the freezer, I would have thrown them in for good measure.

And now I need to go research my next post.

Mad search terms

2012-01-24T21:43:00.003+11:00

I rarely look at the statistics that Blogger offers up regarding where traffic is coming from and going to. However, I had a peek tonight for the first time in months.

One of the top search terms bringing people to this blog is "hitler kills tinky winky".

The Internet - teaching you something new and disturbing about people every day.

Economics 100 was never this interesting

2012-01-24T21:37:00.001+11:00

I never ever, ever thought I'd be putting up a 3 minute clip about economics. I was bored out of my brain for most of Economics 100, and spent the bulk of the lectures making paper planes and throwing them at the lecturer. Or drinking. Which is why I now need to watch short clips on economics to learn all the stuff that I missed back then. This is a good clip on value - and apparently he'll be producing one per week from now on. Even non-economists should be able to understand the concept he is expounding upon.

And it was Economics 100 that I did, not Economics 101. I don't think we had an Economics 101 course.

h/t - Samizdata

Our forebears were a tough lot

2012-01-24T18:18:00.003+11:00

From a book I am reading:

"He arrived in Borneo to be greeted by the agent and the news that rebellion had broken out among the Dayak head-hunters. They set off on a survey with a contingent of Sikh soldiers. That night there was an alarm, and the Sikhs began firing into the dark. Bullets whistled everywhere - up in the air, into trees, even straight through the engineer's tents. Next morning, the Sikhs were sent marching back to base - facing head-hunters seemed less of a risk. in fact, shortly after the Sikhs had gone a Dayak informed them that the rebellion was over, and proved his point by unwrapping a cloth and proudly displaying the head of the chief rebel.

....

One of the surveyors, Inerny, wanted a large tree chopped down so that he could get a sighting, but the men pointed out that there was a huge bees' nest in the branches. Inerny however insisted. The axemen did their work and fled leaving Inerny sighting down his theodolite. Not for long. The irate bees descended and the surveyor had to leap into a swamp to avoid being stung to death. Unhappily, the swap was full of leeches who greeted this unexpected meal with great enthusiasm. Pauling found the story 'very amusing'. Inerny, who nearly bled to death, failed to see the joke.

Question - should we investigate the Dayaks for making off with the head of the chief rebel?

Astro turfing 101

2012-01-23T22:23:00.000+11:00

Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.

In the SMH today, we had David Shoebridge MP complaining about the number of firearms permits being issued in NSW. You can read David in his own words here.

Intriguingly, the SMH quotes The National Coalition for Gun Control. What exactly is the NCGC?

Well, Robert Borsak of the Shooters and Fishers Party is not exactly an unbiased source, but this is interesting:

I refer, of course, to the so-called National Coalition for Gun Control—"national", hardly! The group is actually a coalition of two people and, as far as I can determine, was created to serve the ego of the self-styled next leader of the Federal Greens, our old friend Lee Rhiannon. As far as anyone knows, the coalition is made up of a Tasmanian lawyer based in Hobart and Samantha Lee, the grandly titled chair of the group.

If the coalition were properly constituted it would no doubt have a constitution, a registered address and, indeed, a membership list. We should be able to apply for membership. I do not believe the group has any of these community-based organisational attributes. It is a straw dummy, a coward's soap box filled with froth and no substance.

The Coalition of Law Abiding Sports Shooters said something similar a few years ago.

The CLASS link provides an interesting snippet:

On Thursday 18th March 2004 Ms Samantha Lee made unfounded claims, bordering on slander, that the ‘pro-gun lobby’ sent out a cancellation notice using Coalition for Gun Control (CGC) letterhead.

Well, the NCGC put out this Media Release in Feb 2008 complaining about a gun show in Wodonga.

If you download the original Word document and have a look at the properties to see who wrote it, you get this:

Good thing the NCGC didn't stuff up and put out their release on the letter head of the NSW Attorney General's Department. (The "Angie Stephenson" is/ was also a spokesperson for Animal Liberation NSW). According to this link, Samantha Lee also worked for the Attorney General.

Anyway, here you have the NCGC allegedly being setup by Lee Rhianon (a Green), and it allegedly consisting of two people and a fax machine (or two people and the computers of the AG's department - I just hope the phone numbers on that NCGC press release don't belong to AG supplied phones). And then somehow the SMH manages to run a story that includes input from David Shoebridge (a Green) and a Green front group. Funny that. Is that a coincidence, or are we just being manipulated and played for fools?

Disclosure. I don't have any guns in the house. I haven't had a gun license in 2 decades. However, I do enjoy doing the odd bit of hunting every few years (when I get the opportunity) with friends who own firearms. I've been a member of a pistol club, and I started shooting at the age of 12 on a relative's farm. I've fired about a dozen different handguns over the years.

I was a pretty good shot before I joined the Army Reserve, and with some expert training, I became a bloody good shot. I am probably still quite proficient with the M-16, SLR, M-60, Browning Hi-Power and F-1 sub-machine gun. I reckon I could still operate a grenade launcher, rocket launcher and the Charlie Gutsache. I've never shot anyone, or taken part in a massacre of unarmed civilians. I manage to conceal my craziness most of the time.

As for the 3 guns per person limit that Shoebridge is pushing....I'll leave that for another day. If I had a bit of bush and I needed to clean out the vermin and feral animals, I'd want at a minimum:

a .22 for the small stuff
a shotgun
a .243 for the medium sized stuff, or the small stuff that has to be shot at a reasonable range (foxes)
a .308 for the big things

That's four. I wonder how many foxes, rabbits, feral pigs, goats etc Mr Shoebridge has shot? I wonder if he's even seen a feral pig, and the damage that they do to our native bush? Somehow, I doubt it.

Is "rort" a naughty word?

2012-01-23T21:28:00.000+11:00

Our favourite Green, David Shoebridge MP, has written a blog post complaining that a Green councillor has been reprimanded for a code of conduct violation. David thinks that is very bad.

Councillor Freewater was raising legitimate matters for public debate and he should not have been prosecuted for raising them publicly.

The thing is, when referring to his fellow councillors in the press, Freewater used the term "rort".

What's the definition of rort?

Well, it's a "financial impropriety" or "to defraud."

If Freeman thought his fellow councillors had been engaged in fraud, he should have reported it to ICAC and had his claims properly investigated. If he doesn't have evidence to support such an allegation, he should apologise and shut up. If I was accused in public of defrauding my council, I'd sue the bastard that said such a thing.

A few links worth having a look at

2012-01-22T20:02:00.003+11:00

Carpe Diem - the beginnings of the Chinese economic revolution

The effect of throwing money at education. ie, no effect at all. Things might even get worse.

Compare the changes and improvements in China (above) with the progress made by Aborigines in Australia.

Another look at how the underclass carries on in Australia.

One more book for the wish list

2012-01-22T16:00:00.003+11:00

The better angels of our nature

We’ve all had the experience of reading about a bloody war or shocking crime and asking, “What is the world coming to?” But we seldom ask, “How bad was the world in the past?”

In this startling new book, the bestselling cognitive scientist Steven Pinker shows that the world of the past was much worse. With the help of more than a hundred graphs and maps, Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia, then suddenly were targeted for abolition. Wars between developed countries have vanished, and even in the developing world, wars kill a fraction of the people they did a few decades ago. Rape, battering, hate crimes, deadly riots, child abuse, cruelty to animals—all substantially down.

How could this have happened, if human nature has not changed? What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? The key to explaining the decline of violence, Pinker argues, is to understand the inner demons that incline us toward violence (such as revenge, sadism, and tribalism) and the better angels that steer us away. Thanks to the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

With the panache and intellectual zeal that have made his earlier books international bestsellers and literary classics, Pinker will force you to rethink your deepest beliefs about progress, modernity, and human nature. This gripping book is sure to be among the most debated of the century so far.

Found this at Samizdata.

Sense of humour failure

2012-01-22T14:40:00.000+11:00

Tony Abbott was criticised this week by a Labor MP for making a humurous response about the Costa Concordia on radio. Rob Mitchell MP appears to be suffering from a sense of humour failure, which is about as un-Australian as it gets. Rob Mitchell should be deported immediately to somewhere like North Korea, where I'm sure he'll fit in beautifully. Except the fat bastard will have to lose a bit of weight if he's to fit in with the norks.

I grabbed these six cartoons from Theo Spark, and they show how cartoonists around the world responded to the wreck - with humour. Get over it Rob, you puffed up, self-important twit.

PS - the boat hitting the rocks - that's obviously Abbott's fault too.

Snippets from "Open Road"

2012-01-22T14:07:00.000+11:00

"Open Road" is a fairly useless magazine that the NRMA sends me because I'm a member of their roadside service. It usually takes me about 30 seconds to flick through it before it goes into the recycling. The current edition is not on line, and they publish it in a format that makes it a bastard to link to. So I'm not going to bother. If you want to be bored, Google "nrma open road".

In my 30 second flick through this month, I found these two snippets:

From the editor:

"Some people hat the outback. I discovered this while talking to a journalist who had spent a night in Coober Pedy. he was the product of an inner-city upbringing and for him such a remote town was a special kind of phobic hell. No people! Nothing to do! Large men wearing bushy beards and blue singlets! Help!"

Nice to see that someone working in the media has noticed how blinkered trendy inner-city types can be about everything west of the Anzac Bridge. The further west you go, the more icky it becomes for them. And then you hit Adelaide....a special kind of hell.

Then in the letters page:

"Are there any plans to have Open road as an e-book? Us grey nomads are not home for extended periods, and return to multiple copies of Open Road. However, I have a Kindle reader and would be able to receive Open Road via the internet".

My first thought is that poor old Bruce from Doonside has lost his marbles - actually wanting to read Open Road. But then it dawned on me that about 50% of the magazine is aimed at grey nomads, so maybe Bruce is onto something.

My second thought is that it was interesting how some oldies have grabbed onto technology like the Kindle with a passion. Caravaning with a Kindle is a great idea - no more having to lug books around, and you can read it at night without having to rig up a light. Plus you can buy and download books from anywhere that has an internet signal - no more hunting for book stores in pokey little country towns.

What gets me is that so many people think that oldies are technophobic and useless at adopting new ideas. Well, in about 30 years time, I'll be an oldie, and I doubt that I'll have many problems adapting to whatever new technologies exist at that time (assuming I live that long).

My parents were born in the age of the horse and buggy, and they had no problem shifting to the motor car. And when you consider how much more difficult the cars of that era were to drive (no syncro-mesh gears, no power steering, manual chokes, under powered, crank starts, no power brakes etc etc), it makes you realise that most humans are in fact incredibly good at adopting new technologies. The cars that my parents learned to drive were low-tech by the standards of today, but the lack of technology made them much harder to master than say a current Ford Focus.

Well, most technologies. The Taliban have no problems using satellite phones and so on, but the Afghans seem to have a problem using flush toilets.

There are some sick puppies out there

2012-01-22T11:13:00.001+11:00

Lots more excellent photos from the Tour Down Under over at Cycling Tips Blog.

And no, you won't catch me wearing something like that on a bike. Or anywhere else for that matter. Those days have passed...

A good reason not to go vegetarian

2012-01-21T17:17:00.002+11:00

"And now he's a lady".

Time to fire up the BBQ.

Thanks to Cycling Inquisition, the home of lots of interesting stuff. As in cycling interesting stuff.

Beware of women drivers

2012-01-21T13:22:00.000+11:00

Delta Sierra Bravo.

Friday photos

2012-01-20T20:25:00.001+11:00

Pretty in pink?

Joining the queue at the King St traffic lights. By the time the lights went green, there were half a dozen cyclists piled up behind me.

The race is on - the lights go green in Pyrmont and a small pack heads off towards the Anzac bridge. At this time of day (about 5.30pm), a pack as big as this or bigger forms every time the light turns red. You don't get a steady stream of cyclists going down the hill from these lights - you get a solid shoal of 10-20 bikes every few minutes, and then nothing in between.

And I didn't see anyone behave like last night's idiot - every cyclist I saw stopped for red lights, obeyed the road laws and rode sensibly. That doesn't always happen, but I guess as cycling is becoming more main stream and more middle aged, middle class types are taking it up, the lawless and reckless element are becoming a smaller fraction of the total cycling population.

Thursday photos

2012-01-19T21:48:00.001+11:00

Had a busy week so far - haven't had time to scratch my bum, let alone post stuff. First photo is from Monday - it was fine when I left home, but it started pouring down when I reached the edge of the CBD. It warmed up after that and it hasn't rained much since, but I've been getting home totally saturated with sweat. I'd rather be riding in the rain.

See the number plate under the seat? "Dad's taxi".

Shane Warne stirred up a bit of controversy this week when he tangled with a cyclist in peak hour in Melbourne. Here's the cyclist's side of the story. My view? Get a video camera so that you can record whatever happens on the road. Sooner or later, you're going to need it.

Whilst most cyclists tend to be fairly polite and law abiding and sensible, along came the knob above to prove that some cyclists are impolite, law breaking idiots. I rode behind this bloke for about 3 minutes. In that time, he almost ran down a pedestrian at a cross walk (I had slowed almost to a stop to let the pedestrian pass, and he tried to go around me and only pulled up at the last second - in a huff), he then yelled at a pedestrian (although the pedestrian was being an idiot by standing stupidly in the middle of a bike lane whilst he had a red light) and he then rode down the wrong side of a traffic island to get around a corner 3 seconds faster than if you went the right way (like me).

I wasn't pushing it - I picked up an infection on the weekend, so I've been riding at about 70% of my usual pace this week - but I still managed to zip past him once we were on the Anzac Bridge. His biggest problem is that he was unfit and slow. If he was fitter and faster, he wouldn't have to be so aggressive and rule breaking in order to get home quickly. He was taking stupid shortcuts because he wasn't strong enough and fit enough to maintain a fast pace. I stopped at the red lights, gave way to pedestrians, smiled at the guy he yelled at, followed the road rules and still blew pasts him.

This bloke wasn't going anywhere in a hurry - it would be hard work dragging a kid or two up a hill like this. Pretty fast way to lose a bit of weight.

This is steam, not CO2

2012-01-19T20:28:00.000+11:00

Steam rising from a NUCLEAR power plant

Just in case any retarded Greens visit again to discuss Senator Hansen-Young and her stupid cartoon, I'd like to point out that the white fluffy stuff that you see rising above coal fired and nuclear power plants is H2O, not CO2. It's water vapour. Steam. Assuming you're a stinking hippies and that you have showers every now and then (a big assumption), the steam fluffing around your bathroom is the same sort of steam coming out of the cooling towers of coal fired plants. That white stuff is not "carbon pollution" and you can't slap a carbon tax on it.

It's also a potent greenhouse gas. A more potent greenhouse gas that CO2. However, I'd like to see you try to tax water vapour.

Picture gratefully stolen from Bob Carr.

VIDEO: The Hidden Beauty of Pollination

2012-01-15T12:54:00.004+11:00

Absolutely stunning video. H/T - Carpe Diem. Worth the standing ovation at the end.

Hunting and gathering

2012-01-14T21:19:00.000+11:00

I am not a particularly skilled gardener - if we had to live of what I am able to grow, we'd look like a family of anorexics. That said, we are getting a reasonable tomato crop this year - for the first time ever. Over the last decade, I have learned every possible way to kill tomato plants, cucumbers, eggplants, capsicum, chilli, rocket, carrots, corn and cauliflower. If experience is the sum of your mistakes, then I am very experienced.

The tomatoes need picking every day, and as we had a bevy of teenagers in the backyard recently, I told them to grab a bucket and do the picking.

Boy, took about being on the wrong end of a look of horror! It was if I had asked them to enter the Glade of Axe Murdering Maniacs for an extended overnight stay. Collecting food??! How primitive....and strange. And just downright weird.

I told them that I didn't bloody care - the tomatoes needing gathering, and they were the ones to do it. Three of them got off their bum and started tentatively hunting through the bushes, whilst the fourth hung back and said it wasn't for him.

Within 30 seconds, the 3 who ventured into the tomato jungle were having a good time foraging for food. However, Mr Cool had blown it, and not wanting to look silly, he slunk off instead of joining in.

It struck me that this must have been the first time any of them had actually gathered food from its source. They're city kids. Poor bastards.

By their age, I'd put so many rabbits in the pot, I can't bear to eat them in fancy restaurants these days. My uncle could skin a rabbit in seconds - he was a kid during the Depression, and one way to make money was in rabbiting. He could skin a rabbit faster than the eye could follow. A couple of nicks around the paws and then ziiiip! One naked rabbit.

Although I didn't grow up on a farm, I had access to enough of them during my teens and 20s to have spent a lot of time picking berries from bushes, fruit from trees and vegies from gardens. I still think the best icecream I've ever had was a home made one that we concocted from 5 different varieties of freshly picked berries, cream, sugar and a good dash of Vok. I've also helped with the messy business of turning kangaroos, sheep, pigs and cattle into chops and steaks and bacon and pet food. I can't butcher a carcass for nuts - just as I am useless at filleting fish and cleaning squid and octopus. But I've done it and I can do it. Just not very professionally. About the only thing I am good at is taking the heads off prawns.

As for seafood, I've scuba dived for prawns, peeled abalone off rocks, collected crayfish, waded through dams netting yabbies, speared lots of fish and potted drunkenly for crabs.

And with fowl, I've wielded the axe on chickens, shot at a lot of ducks (and missed) and found the best way to get them is with a trap. All very illegal of course, but my uncle was never one for following the rule book when it came to collecting food. Especially delicious food.

The kids have missed out on all of that. Their idea of foraging is to trek up to McDonalds. I'll have to see if I can do something about that.

Socialist Alternative looney tunes

2012-01-14T11:52:00.001+11:00

"Capitalism and the origins of racism".

Wouldn't surprise me if the meeting is attended by people like this (go and read the whole thing - hilarious):

After that the speaker seemed to me to cast off all pretence of rationality and even plausibility. Our compromised blood/brain barriers are the result of a conspiracy between the government, the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry. The earth has a heartbeat, which is increasing in rapidity. In 1911 it was 7.4. Today it is up near 11. The HIV virus is a myth put about to promote the Aids industry.

But we needn’t despair. Society is changing. The earth is travelling in a part of the universe saturated with health-giving, consciousness-changing photons. The pharmaceutical companies and ‘powers that be’ know this. That is why they are currently doing everything in their power to prevent us getting that photon-electron attachment to our cells. But they can’t prevent us from going barefoot! They can’t asphalt over the entire planet! Here, spontaneous applause broke out. The audience was absolutely lapping it up. They might be brain-damaged but they were still the local intelligentsia and they could still recognise truth when they heard it. But I’d heard enough. I knocked back the dregs of my beer and made for the door.

Greens and their scientific ignorance published for all to see

2012-01-13T08:17:00.000+11:00

The Summer section of the SMH pubished this cartoon from Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens today.

Note the bottom left panel - it shows typical power station cooling towers emitting steam, and she has used them to illustrate "1 tonne of carbon pollution".

Are the Greens really that ignorant?

Saddlebags

2012-01-05T09:21:00.002+11:00

Rather than lugging around that back pack, saddle bags might be a better idea. What do you think , Cav?

How to make me feel slow and pathetic

2012-01-04T22:26:00.001+11:00

Untitled from Robbie McEwen on Vimeo.

Adjusting

2012-01-04T09:54:00.001+11:00

After over a week off the bike, the body had a bit of trouble adjusting to climbing back on yesterday. The legs were fine, the bum was fine, but my scrotum felt like it was sitting on a cheese grater. That was a bit unexpected.

And not nice.

Mates

2012-01-04T09:51:00.001+11:00

Caught up with some old mates over the break. We were sitting in the swimming pool, and one of them asked:

"Are you still riding your bike?"

"Yeah".

Glancing at my guts - "Doesn't look like it".

Thankfully, they are all fat, bald or grey - or a combination of all three.

Saturday photos

2011-12-24T09:30:00.000+11:00

About the only sliver of blue sky I saw all week.

One loner kayaker.

I wrote a comment on another blog this week that I rarely see commuters on bikes with fat tyres, suspension and mud guards - so what do I see the next morning? Exactly that. This is the first set of mud guards that I've seen in months. It sometimes drizzles lightly in Sydney, but more often than not, we seem to get torrential downpours. Apart from a few winter months, the rest of the time it's warm enough to not worry about getting wet.

I've seen lots of touring or tourist cyclists this week - and all of them have been grey haired. The above pair were the most casual of the lot - others were in full racing kit and were heading in the opposite direction to me. Must be something about the holiday season that brings them out.

Every day carry

2011-12-23T11:00:00.000+11:00

Fascinating blog, thanks to a Very British Dude.

Eeek!

2011-12-23T07:00:00.000+11:00

And if you are drunk, even walking, let alone cycling home, can be another bad decision. One 29-year-old male just overbalanced on the footpath and fell on to the road. The car coming towards him only barely stopped in time.

In fact, every night an ambulance gets called to a male cyclist who is drunk and has been hit by a car or just lost control of himself and crashed.

I definitely won't be cycling anywhere this Christmas. Just getting home sober has been enough of a challenge this week - what with the drunken pedestrians weaving hopelessly all over the footpaths at 4 in the afternoon. It must be a bloody shocker by 10pm.

Friday photos

2011-12-22T17:43:00.000+11:00

Grown man, with a good sized bald patch, on a scooter. What should one say about this?

Yes, it's a very grey and gloomy photo. That's because it was utterly bucketing down when I took this photo. Funny how photos don't capture rain.

I was sure this bloke had some sort of electric motor on his bike, because for a small fold-up bike, it moved very quickly.

Sadly, I think he was just fitter and stronger than I.

So much for political correctness

2011-12-18T22:48:00.002+11:00

I was having a rest in a park yesterday afternoon, having been for a long leg-busting ride. I'd starting get leg cramps on the way home, and they got so bad, I had to pull over for a bit of a rest and stretch. I never get cramps - and these were something else. Imagine having a couple of strands of barbed wire inserted into your hamstrings - that's what it felt like. Absolutely awful.

There was a group of teenagers in the park near the seat I was occupying - I know most of them, as they are contemporaries of Junior. I also know a few of their parents - not in a got-their-phone-number-in-your-phone kind of way, but enough to know how to contact them if need be. ie, I know where they live, having dropped most of them home at one point or another over the last few years.

These teens are the arty, goody-goody group. They're not seriously academic or sporty - they're musical and they paint and they do drama and that sort of thing. They're not in with the drinking crowd or the dope smoking crowd at school - they're like a gang of Guy Sebastian's, without the church on Sundays thing.

They've also had 10 years of the most politically correct education possible, having been shunted from one female dominated state school to another. I've met the principals of the schools they went to/go to - all are wet as fish. You'd therefore expect these kids to be as soft and squishy as an underset blancmange and totally tuned in with the Greens agenda.

Wrong.

It's a thoroughly modern group, meaning it includes a black kid, a fat kid, a kid I am sure is gay, a muslim kid and a couple of thorough-going nerds. Instead of being sensitive to these aspects of their friends, they were loudly telling extremely rude jokes and stories about niggers (yes, teens have no trouble shouting that word very loudly at each other), their mothers, jews, muslims, the disabled, poofters, gooks, paedophiles and so forth.

Some examples:

"What did the blind, paraplegic orphan kid get for Christmas"?

Answer - "Cancer".

"What happened to the nigger when he looked up his family tree?"

Answer - "A bird shat on his face"

"Why did the Jews wander in the desert for 40 years?"

Answer - "They heard someone dropped a coin".

"I was going through a couple of magazines down at the local mosque and then my gun jammed".

The last one was a new one - all the other jokes they told were doing the rounds when I was that age.

It was impossible to sit within one hundred yards of them and not get an earful of this. Plus the desire amongst some to have anal sex with the girlfriends of the other kids there, or to fuck their friend's mums. The question, "Does your mum give good head?" was asked a few times.

And then like teenage males everywhere, they started fighting in a friendly manner - piling on and chasing each other around and trying to dak the nerdiest of the nerds, and then trying to entice the girls with the group to do some lesbian stuff.

They then discussed their desire to get hold of some guns and "shoot some shit", and as I was leaving, they had started a small harmless fire and were running around it like proper little savages, swearing their heads off. I haven't heard language like that since I was in the infantry.

I rode away smiling, happy that a decade or more of bringing these boys up in an almost testosterone free environment has had no impact whatsoever on their inner beast - it is alive and well and kicking and screaming to get out. And remember - these are the good kids from decent, middle class families where the parents work and aren't divorced and don't have booze and drug problems and arrest records as long as your arm.

I also thought of my poor parents, and what a handful we must have been at this age. Because unlike this lot, we probably would have been drunk, attempting to score dope and doing our best to impregnate all the females. Obscene things would have been undertaken with a blow up doll if we had one (they didn't have inflatable sheep back then - we just had real ones).

When we got older and acquired cars, one of them probably would have ended up on its roof or side by the time the night was over. Some nights were spent drunkenly escaping from the Police and trying to find places to dump the street signs that had been pilfered. I had plenty of practice at propping against a wall with my arms outstretched and my legs apart so as to avoid chundering cheap red wine on my shoes.

If we were in some out of the way place, like a farm or on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition, lots of things would have been set on fire and much port would be drunk. Not necessarily in any order. Rifles and shotguns would have been taken out of unlocked wardrobes and various things merrily ventilated. When we got older and acquired explosives, things would have been blown up. And I do mean "blown up".

I was starting to think that mine was the last generation of males to have the sort of violent, drunken, dangerous fun that we had, and that the Feminazis had ruined it for the current crop. Unfortunately for the Feminazis, nature is stronger than all the indoctrination that they can throw at young males. Nature, for once, is winning.

These young blokes will be utter meat heads for a decade or so, and then they'll slowly mature and end up being captains of industry, politicians, diplomats, artists, entrepreneurs and senior government officials - and sober, conservative, law-abiding fathers to the next generation. Somehow, we turned out OK. I have faith that the next lot will do the same.

Friday photos

2011-12-17T11:05:00.000+11:00

I blogged the other day about a retard that didn't want to give way to an ambulance coming our way on lights and sirens. 2 minutes later, I was on the ANZAC bridge, and I went past a 4 car shunt. Nothing too serious - just lots of broken glass and pushed up bonnets. However, it was ironic that as I took this photo, I could hear the wail of the ambulance siren getting closer. I don't think they were heading for this multi-prang - no one looked like they even had a bruise. Impatience and stupidity behind the wheel leads to smashing into other things, which might lead to a trip to Emergency or the morgue.

Not that drivers are alone in being stupid and impatient. I was driving home from a late night shopping trip last night, and a drunk woman in a pink dress stumbled out of a taxi up ahead and then staggered rapidly across the road right in front of me. I had plenty of time to brake, as I was half expecting her to do something stupid, but alcohol and impatience and roads definitely don't mix well.

Electric bike lady - got overtaken by an electric bike today that must have had a HUGE motor in it - it was flying.

The sky - haven't seen that for a while.

Ninja cyclist - dressed in black from head to foot. Even his ninja backpack is black. Blends in beautifully with the road.

Why is it that some people are just incapable of walking on the left?

This bloke must ride a lot - he's got a great tan.

Big ship, low bridge

2011-12-16T22:22:00.001+11:00

From where I was standing, I was sure a bit of radar equipment was going to end up dangling from the bottom of the bridge.

Kids with no books

2011-12-14T22:53:00.000+11:00

From the Guardian (not something I read every day):

Three in 10 children in the UK do not own a single book of their own, with alarming implications for their future prospects, according to new research. The survey by the National Literacy Trust also shows that boys are less likely to own books than girls.

The survey of 18,141 young people found that four in 10 boys did not own any books, compared to three in 10 girls. Children who did not own books were two-and-a-half times more likely (19%) to read below their expected level than children who had their own books (7.6%), and were also significantly less likely (35.7%) to read above their expected level than book-owning children (54.9%). The online survey took place in November and December last year, with the majority of participants aged between 11 and 13 years old.

"People tend to think that literacy is an international development issue, [but] actually we have got massive literacy problems in this country," said Jonathan Douglas, director of the National Literacy Trust. "To be brutally honest we weren't expecting [the number of children without their own books] to be so high. We know that book ownership in this country is really strongly linked to literacy issues and social mobility."

That's just sad. I come from a book owning family. Between our house and the houses of my parents and siblings, we have somewhere in the order of 10,000 books - and the majority of that is serious, non-fiction. Our family simply loves to read - anytime, anywhere. We all have the ability to lose ourselves in a book - to get so engrossed in what we are reading, we don't hear anything that's going on around us.

For once, I trust the results of this survey - I've been into plenty of houses where I've gone from one end to the other seeking a bookcase, and have found none. I like to poke around in people's bookcases to see if they have anything worth reading - whenever friends visit us, they always borrow a couple of books (sometimes an entire bag full) and swap them over on their next visit. I've seen houses that have massive libraries of movies on DVD and video games, but no books apart from the Yellow Pages. Plenty of people just aren't into reading books.

It's all about choice. We choose to not have pay TV or video games, and we only have one TV in the house. No one gets a TV in their room, and I'll die before putting one in the kitchen or dining room. We have no budget for books - if anyone in the family sees a book they want, they can have it, no questions asked. The money we save on pay TV and video games etc is instead spent on books. We spend at least half an hour every night reading between two and four books to the young kids. And I mean every night. Not every school night - every night. That's our choice, and I am in total agreement with Mark Latham that it's the right thing to do. Others choose differently, and they reap the results.

You can lead a kid to a library, but you can't make them read.

Insanely impatient idiot

2011-12-14T22:45:00.000+11:00

On my way home last night, I stopped for a red light in Pyrmont. As I stood there waiting for the green, a siren started up nearby and it steadily got louder as whatever emergency vehicle it was on approached us.

Just as the lights went green, I caught my first glimpse of an ambulance approaching from our right. It crossed onto the wrong side of the road to get around the line of traffic stalled in front of it.

I was in the bike lane. Off to my left, there was a cyclist waiting at the lights out there on the road with the cars, and the cyclist patiently waited for the ambulance to get past (as did the cars in the lane beside him).

Behind the cyclist was a red car. In the red car was an impatient idiot.

Although it was clear to all and sundry that an ambulance was tearing up the road on lights and sirens, and everyone was waiting patiently for it to get by, the idiot in the red car started beeping at the cyclist in an effort to make him ride across the intersection in front of the ambulance. The cyclist put his hand out behind him, giving the motorist a "stop" signal - as in, "You'll just have to wait until the noisy thing with flashing lights on it goes past us". All that produced was more honking from the driver.

Madness.

The ambulance tore past, and as it did so, the traffic lights went orange. The idiot in the car was honking madly at this point, so the cyclist went straight ahead through the intersection. The red car took off as well and turned right, tooting loudly as they tore through what was now a very red light.

If the cyclist had given into the idiot in the red car and failed to wait and give way to the ambulance, the red car would have turned right and driven straight into the path of the oncoming ambulance, blocking it from proceeding further. Instead of having to wait for 15 seconds, they'd have been stuck in a face-off with an ambulance.

I don't know what gets into some people. I was surrounded by quite a pack of cyclists (like below), and we all just muttered and shook our heads at the stupidity we'd just witnessed. The moron in the red car is the sort of person who will either be taking a trip in an ambulance before Christmas, or they'll be responsibly for putting someone else in the back of one.

The sooner I am allowed to cycle tooled up like this, the better.

NSW Police hunt wanted murder suspect.

Me and my big mouth

2011-12-14T21:04:00.002+11:00

Came home tonight and felt very chuffed. Told the missus, "Hey, the old blog got linked to today by two monsters of the blogsphere".

"That's nice. How did you do that?"

"I read a really long and boring financial report and found one line worth reporting on".

"Well, if you've got enough time to sit around reading financial statements, you have too much time on your hands. Go and fold all the laundry".

Like I said - me and my big mouth.

Greenpeace, and their interesting accounting euphamisms

2011-12-12T21:52:00.001+11:00

Greenpeace Annual Review 2010, page 19

Whilst looking for some info in the latest Greenpeace annual report, I came across this wonderful set of euphemisms.

Greenpeace puts out two reporting documents each year - a glossy Annual Review full of pretty pictures and nice graphs, and a very unglamorous set of financial statements. You can find both sets going back several years here.

The top picture is an extract from the glossy review. Under expenditure, its lists two items:

Investment in New Supporters - $3.281 million
Communication & Campaign Information for Supporters - $1.947 million

These two add up to $5.228 million, or 31% of everything Greenpeace raised last year.

After reading that, I sat there wondering, "What the fuck does that mean"?

So I read the more boring financial statements.

Greenpeace financial statements 2010, page 29

In the very boring statements, which only idiots like moi read, there appears to be a more straightforward explanation. "Direct costs of fundraising appeals" came to $5.222 million. Interesting that the numbers don't add up across the two reports.

What got my attention was this - why exactly do Greenpeace feel the need to use terms like "investment in new supporters" and "Communication & Campaign Information for Supporters"? Why can't they just come out and say "cost of dressing up idiots in koala suits and having them annoyingly shake buckets at people in the street"?

What have they got to hide?

David Shoebridge and depreciation

2011-12-10T11:33:00.001+11:00

I'd like to say "Hi" to David Shoebridge, or the staffer in his office, who keeps tabs on his Google News feed. God, that must be a boring task. Imagine having to trawl through the backwaters of the blogsphere, forced to read blog posts like mine, and then pen a response. Glad to see the time of our elected representatives and their minions is being put to such good use. And this from a bloke who is mortally offended at the running costs of a Police boat and the maintenance costs on the Police water cannon.

Here's David's comment:

1.Your facts are wrong - the recent figures camefrom the November 2011 budget estimates - and direct answers on depreciationfrom the Police - not from the 2010 estimates.

Below are the two of the questions from David Shoebridge at the Oct 2011 Budget Estimates committee, and the answers from Michael Gallacher. This Q&A session revealed the maintenance cost of the cannon, the depreciation rate and the operating cost per hour. However, it did not cover the purchase cost of the water cannon, which was revealed at the 2010 committee hearing - that cost being $472,000, and not the $700,000 that David would prefer you to believe. Given that the cost of $472,000 was revealed in 2010, why did David do nothing to correct the erroneous SMH article which quoted an estimated cost from 2006 of $700,000?

I guess because if you want to make a figure look big and scary and bad, you use the bigger number (even if it's out of date). Especially when you're bagging an evil monster truck designed to scatter stinking swampies.

My biggest gripe about the 10% depreciation rate is the way it was spun as "rapidly depreciating in value". Did that spin come from Jo Tovey at the SMH, or from David Shoebridge? Let's look at that 10% rate, and decide whether it is a "rapid rate" of depreciation.

Here's an extract from Greenpeace's financial statements for 2010.

You can see that in 2009, they started with $356,845 worth of vehicles, disposed of some vehicles, bought some new ones and deducted depreciation of $53,503. In 2010, they started with $343,298 worth of vehicles, did a few trades and deducted $40,835 in depreciation.

In other words, Greenpeace's vehicle fleet depreciated at a rate of between 12% and 15% over those two years. Given that context, do you still think that 10% depreciation for the Police water cannon is "rapid"?

Greenpeace depreciation expenses, 2010

Greenpeace also offer this lovely note to their financial statements, informing us that the depreciate motor vehicles over 4 years. 4 years! No one tell David - he'll flip his wig if he finds that out.

Greenpeace and their 4 year motor vehicle depreciation policy

And in case you are wondering what rate trucks should be depreciated at, the ATO offers some handy tips for commercial vehicles:

The Commissioner’s effective life for trucks and trailers is currently capped at 7.5 years and 10 years
respectively, however the date of acquisition needs to be taken into account when using the Commissioner’s effective life. If you choose to use a different effective life, you need to be able to substantiate the effective life you are using. The 14 factors set in TR 2000/18 can help you do this.

For trailers and trucks acquired before 1 January 2005 but on or after 21 September 1999, the Commissioner’s effective life determinations were five years for heavy haulage trucks, 62/3 years for trucks generally, and 10 years for trailers

Wow, imagine that. According to the ATO, the effective life for trucks is 7.5 years. I'll leave you to do the maths on that one, and to work out for yourself whether 10% is a "rapid" rate of depreciation.

It must be embarrassing to now know that every accountant in the country that read this story died laughing at the idea of 10% being a rapid depreciation rate for a truck. Even the Greenpeace accountants must have had a wry chuckle over their soy tea. The Fairfax accountants probably died of embarrassment, shaking their heads at how little their reporters understand finance and accounting. Are you going to blame your pet reporter for that clanger, or claim it as your own?

I have another gripe with the SMH story, and that's how some words were switched around to change the emphasis on the costings. This is how the SMH put it:

The government spends $3000 a year on servicing its water nozzles and pumps and on mechanical maintenance.

This is the actual response from the Minister for Police:

"The cost of basic mechanical servicing and servicing of water pumps and water nozzle is approximately $3,000 per annum".

Note how the words have been switched around to put the water nozzles and pumps first, and mechanical maintenance last? When you read the story, that puts the emphasis on the water cannon (evil) and not the truck. Because what is "mechanical servicing"? Well, it's the same sort of thing as when you take your car to your mechanic for a 10,000km service. Oil gets changed, brake pads swapped, filters cleaned or replaced and so on. Shoebridge and/or Tovey have fiddled with the words to make us think that the evil water cannon is a horrible drain on the taxpayer, when for all we know it cost a hundred bucks to service the water nozzle and $2,900 to do a 50,000km service on the truck. It's all about how you spin it.

David Shoebridge then left a 2nd part to his comment:

2. I find your comment about hating police bothoffensive and transparently wrong. You might like to see some of the work myoffice has recently done in supporting police - it can be found here: http://davidshoebridge.org.au/2011/11/25/shooters-and-fred-nile-strike-deal-with-coalition-to-betray-police/

Well, read the questions below and see whether you think Shoebridge is really supportive of the Police or not. After reading reams of hansard blurb and committee transcripts, he seems to have a thing about "Police brutality" and "Police shootings" and gets worked up into a lather about whether Police are wearing ID badges properly at riots and protests. Personally, I find question 71 below to be offensive and transparently wrong. "What investigations are current or planned to assess reports of police violence in this removal?" David, I suggest you go read up on Janus.

How do you price a water cannon?

2011-12-08T22:09:00.001+11:00

How much did the NSW Police water cannon cost?

Was it $700,000 or was it $472,291.35?

If you ask Josephine Tovey at the SMH, you'll get the first answer. If you just happened to ask the then Police Minister back in September 2010, you'd get the second answer.

Jo Tovey, as seen on Twitter

So how did Ms Tovey manage to inflate the purchase cost by 48%?

Simple - it appears she relied on that trusted source of information called.... the Sydney Morning Herald. Back in August 2007, the SMH ran a story on the unveiling of the truck. That story is now quoted by Wikipedia (so it must be true). In a rather stunning bit of cut'n'paste journalism, Ms Tovey recycled a story by Andrew Clennell and blended in some old news from the cop-hating Greens MP, David Shoebridge.

Picture from 2007 story

Notice anything similar about these two photos?

Picture from 2011 story

I lifted the following bits from the 2007 story:

The black truck with a fire hose on top made heavy work of it but eventually managed to knock over 120-kilogram pylons for the television cameras.

Yesterday, 18 months after Morris Iemma announced that the State Government would buy a $700,000 water cannon for the riot squad in what was widely depicted as a stunt in the wake of the Cronulla riots, the Premier unveiled it yesterday with a demonstration at Homebush Bay

The head of the public order and riot squad, Superintendent Steve Cullen, confirmed that the truck held 12,000 litres of water but would not say how long it could keep firing water, except to say it was more than five minutes.

That explains the following lines from Josephine's 2011 story:

THE state's $700,000 water cannon is rapidly depreciating in value and has still never been used, new figures show.

The four-year-old device, a large black truck that can carry 12,000 litres of water which it fires from its roof, is depreciating at 10 per cent a year, according to figures provided by the Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, in response to budget estimates questions on notice from the Greens.

Err, no.

David Shoebridge, a Greens MP who appears to loathe the police, guns and tasers (not necessarily in that order) asked a few questions of the Police Minister at a budget estimates committee on 17 September 2010. She at least got the bit about a Green asking the questions correct. He didn't ask any questions on this topic at the latest budget estimates meetings on 27 October 2011. These are not "new figures". They are old figures. And they are wrong.

What she failed to comprehend is that the answers were provided by the then Labor Minister for Police, Michael Daley. At that time, Mike Gallacher was the Opposition police spokesman, and didn't take over as Police Minister until after the state election in March 2011.

Hilariously, Jo offers the following description of herself: "I write about state politics for the SMH". FMD.

Oh look, Jo Tovey and Antony Lowenstein are buddies. Or twitties.

Now, to be fair to Jo, the 2007 story was based on a press release from the then Premier, Morris Iemma. Unfortunately, that press release appears to have disappeared down the memory hole. I have just spent a fruitless hour searching for the original so we could see what old Morris had to say back then. The closest thing I can find is this set of Legislative Council Questions and Answers from 4 April 2006:

Unfortunately, no costs were mentioned in the answer. But of course the question was posed by another cop-hating Green, Lee Rhiannon.

This is not what I would call an accurate, well researched bit of journalism. But then again, Jo does "write" for the SMH.

Word of advice, Jo - don't believe everything the Greens tell you. And as for you and Antony Lowenstein Twitting at each other.....

Thursday photos

2011-12-08T21:15:00.001+11:00

The Carbin Tax must be working already (all praise the Carbin Tax), because the earth has cooled considerably since it passed the Senate. It's been a miserable week in Sydney - cold and wet and grey. I packed away my leg warmers some time ago - I was bloody close to pulling them back out again yesterday. The photo above is not gloomy - this is Sydney on a "sunny" day. Normally, I would have been down the beach for my first dip about 6 weeks ago. At the moment, I'm not even thinking of going anywhere near the salt water. That would be madness.

The bloke on the left had managed to find his leg warmers this morning. I saw one lady cycling in something that looked suspiciously like a ski jacket! I haven't bothered trying to dry my shoes for a week - I just put them on wet in the morning and put up with it. If I stuck them in the dryer at night, it wouldn't help much. They'd be soaked within 2 minutes of leaving the driveway.

People seem to have acclimatised to the crappy weather. For the first few days, I had this path to myself morning and night. However, those that like to keep fit must have gotten sick of being cooped up inside, and they started pouring out onto the paths yesterday. It was wall to wall joggers, all pounding along in the rain. I had a hard time passing them as my bell filled up with water - instead of making a nice loud "ting" that says, "Please move over and let me pass", it was making a dull, quiet "thud" that no one could hear.

See the shiny thing around his right ankle? They seem to be getting more popular. The idea is that a small reflective thing that is rotating quickly draws the eye, making drivers actually notice you on the road. It's a nice idea, but I still maintain that the only proper way to deal with aggressive arseholes on the road is to carry a pistol and open fire on them from time to time.

Runover bride

2011-12-05T21:18:00.001+11:00

Underneath the Harbour Bridge is a popular spot for having your wedding photos taken. The latest trend is to have the bridge and groom stand in the middle of the road, probably because it gives you a great shot with the bridge and Opera House in the background.

If these people saw how taxi drivers flew around this bend, they wouldn't be standing in the middle of the road.

Depreciation. Fairfax vs the NSW Police

2011-12-05T08:00:00.000+11:00

We're back with Josephine Tovey from the SMH and her silly Greens-based story on the Police water cannon.

THE state's $700,000 water cannon is rapidly depreciating in value and has still never been used, new figures show.

The four-year-old device, a large black truck that can carry 12,000 litres of water which it fires from its roof, is depreciating at 10 per cent a year, according to figures provided by the Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, in response to budget estimates questions on notice from the Greens.

Gee, that sounds terrible! A police vehicle is depreciating at 10% per year! How shocking that the Police should allocate $70,000 a year for depreciation out of a total Police budget of $2.68bn this year and $3.2bn next year!

Let's just gloss over the fact that she totally stuffed up the initial cost of the water cannon - it was $472,000 rather than $700,000. Instead, let's look at depreciation and how it works at Fairfax.

For starters, Fairfax Media allocated $114 million for depreciation last financial year. That is 1,628 times more than Josephine imagines the Police allocated (and 2,425 times more than what the Police actually allocated).

Fairfax based this depreciation on $722 million worth of property, plant and equipment. Josephine was horrified that the cops are depreciating the riot truck at 10% a year, yet if you divide $114 million into $722 million, you find that Fairfax are depreciating at over 15%!

And it's not only physical assets that get depreciated - intangible assets like tradenames (eg, the Sydney Morning Herald) may also need to be depreciated or amortised. In this case, Fairfax are amortising some intangibles at 5% per year.

Don't show the above to Josephine - Fairfax are depreciating websites over 2 to 4 years, which implies a depreciation rate of between 25% and 50%!

Long lived physical assets of course get depreciated at low rates over extended periods. Printing presses get depreciated over 20 years by Fairfax, but if Josephine keeps writing like this, they'll be worthless in much less than 20 years.

The above numbers are all in millions of dollars. Josephine was horrified that the Police are writing off $70,000 per year on a truck - Fairfax wrote off $27 million on software, and $74 million on plant and equipment.

Even worse, Fairfax wrote off $649 million worth of mastheads, goodwill and customer relationships last year. That's nearly 1/4 of the entire Police budget, yet Josephine doesn't appear to have noticed this massive depreciation at the core of Fairfax.

Crap like this is possibly responsible - plugging Earth Hour at the expensive of balanced news coverage.

So what area caused a big slab of these write offs? That's right - "Metropolitan Media", which I imagine includes The Age and The SMH. Metrepolitan media was written down by over one quarter of a billion dollars last financial year - chew on that, Josephine.

Josephine, if you bother reading your own annual report, you might notice that the number of individual shareholders has dropped from 50,843 in 2007 to 37,974 at the end of the last FY - a 25% plunge. The number of people who think Fairfax has a future is depreciating just a bit slower than the Police water cannon.

However, your share price has dropped even faster than the water cannon - plummeting from $4.36 in 2007 to $0.98 at the end of the FY (and $0.85 today).

Ponder that, you financial illiterate.

Untangling the ownership of EarthHour

2011-12-05T02:00:00.000+11:00

According to the 2011 Annual Report from WWF Australia, Earth Hour is a "grassroots environmental campaign that had its humble beginnings in Sydney in 2007."

Grassroots? How can it be "grassroots" when it was conceived and run by a major multi-national media corporation and a huge muti-national environmental outfit?

WWF Australia Annual Report 2011

According to Wikipedia:

Earth Hour was conceived by WWF and The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights.

The Wikipedia entry also notes that:

The Australian, a competing news outlet, said that journalists at Melbourne's Age newspaper claimed they had been pressured not to write negative stories about Earth Hour because of the parent company's sponsorship arrangement. The Australian went on to say that on April 10, a statement from the journalists claimed that "Reporters were pressured not to write negative stories and story topics followed a schedule drafted by Earth Hour organisers".

What exactly is the "sponsorship arrangement" that Fairfax Media has with Earth Hour?

A quick delve into a few years worth of Fairfax annual reports shows that it is a lot more than a "sponsorship agreement". Fairfax Media actually owns 33% of Earth Hour Limited.

Fairfax Annual Report 2011

And Earth Hour Limited first showed up in the Fairfax annual report in 2009.

Fairfax Annual Report 2009

The annual reports don't provide any breakdown as to the revenue, expenses and assets of Earth Hour Limited.

Search result for Earth Hour annual report

And funnily enough, although "Earth Hour Limited" is listed as a company that Fairfax has an interest in, I can't find an annual report for it anywhere.

Whois Lookup for earthhour

The WWF registered the domain name, so I tried searching through their annual reports as well - no luck. They talk about Earth Hour as an event, but report nothing about it financially.

WWF key management personnel compensation

What I did discover from searching the WWF reports is that the top three managers at WWF Australia took home total compensation of just under $500,000 between them last year - that's from a total income of $19.4 million for the entire organisation. In other words, the top three managers creamed off 2.5% of all donations. Also, they took home a whopping $65,000 more in 2011 than 2010 - a 19% pay rise.

If you divide the total package by three, it comes to an average of $165,000 each. However, we know that the CEO will be getting more than the other two, and by my reckoning, that puts him into the top 1% of Australians. Who knew that the ranks of the fat cats would include the CEOs of small environmental organisations like WWF?

Anyway, to get back on track, all we really know about Earth Hour limited is that it is 33% owned by Fairfax Media. Everything else about the company is secret squirrel. I wonder if the usual SMH blather about Earth Hour 2012 will include a disclaimer that Fairfax owns 1/3 of the operation?

I doubt it.

Fairfax fails to grasp depreciation, and the facts

2011-12-04T20:52:00.001+11:00

Dictionary.com defines depreciation as:

1. decrease in value due to wear and tear, decay, decline in price, etc.
2. such a decrease as allowed in computing the value of property for tax purposes.
3. a decrease in the purchasing or exchange value of money.
4. a lowering in estimation.

Another financial term that crops up in annual reports is impairment. I like this definition of that term:

Weakening, damage, or deterioration, especially as a result of injury or disease.

The diseased and deteriorating thing in this case is the SMH, and in particular, the credibility of Josephine Tovey. She penned this masterpiece on Friday:

Water waste of money: riot squad's unused white elephant cops a spray

From the story:

THE state's $700,000 water cannon is rapidly depreciating in value and has still never been used, new figures show.

The four-year-old device, a large black truck that can carry 12,000 litres of water which it fires from its roof, is depreciating at 10 per cent a year, according to figures provided by the Police Minister, Mike Gallacher, in response to budget estimates questions on notice from the Greens.

The government spends $3000 a year on servicing its water nozzles and pumps and on mechanical maintenance.

Interestingly, a glance at the website of David Shoebridge, the Greens MP who questioned these expenses, reveals this press release from the same day, 2 December 2011:

“Questions on notice asked of the Police Minister by NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge during recent budget estimates hearings have revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on just depreciation and maintenance costs for a rarely used multi-million dollar Police boat – the Nemesis – and the never-used water cannon.

These two white elephants were purchased at a cost of $12 million to the NSW public. They are rarely, if ever, used and ongoing maintenance costs and depreciation continue to mount,” Mr Shoebridge said.

“This money would have been better spent ensuring the financial viability of the serving officers’ death and disability scheme.

“Fancy boats and high powered water cannons might look good in a photo with the Minister, but their lack of use shows they have little or no impact on the actual job of policing.

“The water cannon has never been used and the police patrol boat Nemesis is used less than once a fortnight.

“The truth is we do not have a culture that requires a water cannon to maintain public order and the work of the Nemesis can be performed by a far smaller, and cheaper, vessel.

“The Police budget would be better spent ensuring that police have the training they need and the wages and conditions they deserve, than on a few big toys that hardly get taken out of their wrapping,” Mr Shoebridge said.

What I found odd though is that when I went searching for a transcript of the Budget Estimates committee that talked about the water cannon, all I could find was a transcript from the 2010 hearings - 17 Sept 2010 to be exact. I haven't been able to find any questions from Mr Shoebridge regarding the water cannon and police launch in the latest set of hearings, which happened on 27 October 2011.

However, I did find these written responses to the questions that Shoebridge put to the Labor minister back in 2010:

Dave Shoebridge answer 1

Notice the name of the Minister for Police - Michael Daley. He was the last Labor Minister for Police. He was replaced by Mike Gallacher when the Liberals took office in March 2011. Note the date at the top too - 17 Sept 2010. And note the cost of the water cannon - $472,291.35. I don't know where Josephine Tovey got the figure of $700,000 from. As the Police Commissioner says in the transcript from the 2010 hearing, " I would not want to mislead you".

David Shoebridge answer 2

Then we have transcript 2 from the same 2010 hearing. Total fuel use was 3479 litres of diesel, and $692 was spent on two batteries.

Now, perhaps there are more recent papers that aren't showing up during Google searches, or documents that have not gone on line yet so we're not privy to them.

However, based on the two written answers above from 2010, Josephine Tovey is looking like a twat. so much for fact checking at the SMH. Based on what I've found, she got the Minister wrong, the year wrong and all the numbers wrong. And she appears to have no understanding of depreciation - I'll cover that in another post to stop this one getting too long and boring.

What I think she's done is found a Greens press release, dug up a few numbers and run with it without questioning anything the Greens had put up. Typical - the Greens get a free pass and no investigation. She of course hasn't mentioned that Shoebridge appears to have it in for the cops - he was hauled up by the Privileges Committee recently for saying some nasty things about the Commissioner (who has been given a right of reply).

Happy to be a luddite

2011-12-04T18:19:00.001+11:00

When it comes to books, people seem to fall into two camps. Either you have a lot, or you have none at all.

Our family falls into the first camp. I have never bothered to count my books, as it would take too long. I simply measure them by the metre. If I include the cook books and the reference books (dictionaries, atlases etc), I have about 33 metres worth. The kids have another 7 metres worth of books between them. If I win Lotto, I plan to build a library that looks something like the second last photo in this post.

And that's after numerous annual book culls.

The rest of my side of the family is the same. My library pales into comparison with that collected by my parents - but then again, they've been at it for over twice as long as me (if you count the starting point as being in your mid 20s).

Buying presents for all family members used to be simple - just go to a quality bookshop and browse for a while. The only problem with that is I'd buy a book each for my parents and siblings (if it was Christmas), and 8 or 9 books for me, making it a rather expensive visit. The rest of my family has the same problem. One year, we holidayed together and brought along all the books we had bought for each other and for ourselves. It came to around 40 books - all of them solid, non-fiction books. We were there a week, and the challenge in that time was for each of us to read all the books we would't be taking home. It was a challenge most of us managed to meet.

I now have a problem. The rest of the family has migrated to the iPad - particularly for reading e-books. Mum and Dad like it because they can read in bed without having a bedside lamp on, and since their eyes are getting a bit old, they really like the ability to increase the font size. No more squinting at tiny fonts through a magnifying glass. Since they travel a bit, and are voracious readers, they've been able to cut their luggage back considerably by migrating to e-books.

And who said pensioners were afraid of technology?

I am the family Luddite. I am the only one still buying physical books. I can't help it - I simply like the look and feel of books too much. For instance, I'm currently reading a Folio Society book on the Siege and Fall of Troy. The book is a thing of beauty - it comes in its own case, is a hardback (of course) and is printed on gorgeous wove paper and bound in three-quarter cloth (whatever the hell that is). Even the font is worth admiring - it's Palatino. The book appears to be out of print, but I'm sure it cost me 80 bucks - and it's a short book, so that's nearly a buck per page.

Even with the upfront cost of an iPad, it would make plenty of financial sense for me to make the switch to e-books. For starters, moving house would be a lot easier, and I wouldn't have to shell out $900 for another book case every few years (I like nice bookcases too). And then there are the enormous number of books that are available electronically for nothing.

Anyway, Christmas is coming, and I'm screwed. No one wants a book any more. If they want it, they just download it. What's a guy to do?

Awesome set of clips

2011-12-04T09:55:00.001+11:00

There's a whole series from this lot on Youtube - sunsets, water - all sorts of stuff. Sit down and just watch for half an hour or so.

HT: MJ Perry.

Friday photos

2011-12-04T09:29:00.001+11:00

We had a bit of rain this week, which meant the camera didn't come out much. There wasn't much to photograph anyway - all the soft cyclists disappeared at the first sign of the wet stuff. I had the road to myself some days - as in not a single pedestrian or cyclist anywhere to be seen for the entire trip.

Tomato madness approaches (hopefully)

2011-12-04T09:02:00.001+11:00

I hope I'm not putting the mockers on my forthcoming tomato crop by publishing this, but.....

For the first time ever, it looks like I've successfully grown a tomato crop. Living in Wogville, and obviously being surrounded by wogs, my manhood has been challenged by my inability to produce baskets full of enormous, red tomatoes. Every year around this time, the local rag has a weekly story on Mr Wogalopolis, 72, who has grown a 3 tonne tomato in an olive oil bottle. Try as I might, the best result was last year, when I managed to produce a single handful of fairly useless tomatoes.

Every year, it's been like the plagues of Egypt. Mould, fungus, root rot, leaf wilt, trace element deficiencies, swarms of bugs etc etc. I have a shed full of stuff designed to kill all of the above...and it all failed miserably.

This year, I did a few things differently. So far, judging by the early results, I have done something right.

For starters, I let the plot lay fallow over winter. No bean crops etc for us this year. Instead, I dumped mounds of lawn clippings and chicken poo onto the plot, let it fester for a while and then dug it in with a pitchfork. We have a good lawn to garden ratio, which means every time I mow the lawn, the plot gets a six inch layer of new clippings.

Then I mowed the lawns a few weeks later and did the same. After a few diggings, the soil has gone from almost pure clay to a much lighter mix of organic stuff and fertilizer. Whenever I dig it over now, I uproot bundles of worms. That's a good sign.

Speaking of worms, I got worm farm going for our food scraps. We produce enough to keep a small army of worms very well fed, and the worms obligingly produce litres of worm crap every week. I've been dumping that onto the garden as well (and the tomato plants once they went into the ground). Before I planted, I went a bit mad with the chook poo pellets as well.

I also put in a much better staking and support system for the plants.

The result has been an insane tomato jungle. Last year, which was a good year, the plants got to about 2 feet high, then went yellow, wilted and died. This year, the only way I will find half the crop is to attack the dark green jungle with a machete. I didn't bother doing any pruning or pinching out early on because based on past experience, the plants would need all the leaves they could get (since most of them tended to die). My entirely hands-off approach has resulted in something half the Japanese Army could hide in.

The weather has been cool of late - too cool for the tomatoes to start developing the chemicals that turn them red. But we got a few warm days last week, and the first red buggers have appeared. I might even pick a few today.

I can't remember what variety I planted where, and what varieties I put in. Going on past experience, I thought they'd all die by now, so I didn't pay much attention to what was going where. I think I've got cherry tomatoes, Roma and two other varieties of heirloom Italian stuff. I guess we'll know more in a week or so.

And by Christmas, we'll be sick of tomato salad.

Hide the decline

2011-12-04T08:36:00.001+11:00

Interested in how much power wind farms are generating each day? Have a gander over here then. In the spirit of Michael Mann and the tricks he plays with graphs, I thought I'd eliminate all the "inconvenient data" from the wind farm performance numbers today, giving a false impression that hardly any power is being generated.

Here's the actual numbers.

However, it is worth remembering that the highest performing wind farm in Australia can only generate 39% of its rated capacity. That is, if the turbines say they can put out 100MW, in reality, the best they can do is 39MW. The press releases trumpeting how great the farm is will all use the 100MW figure, making us think that wind generation is 2.5-3 times as good as it really is.

Just remember that next time you open your power bill and gasp. You're paying for it.

Stupid Christmas Number 1 Campaign That This Blog Fully Supports

2011-12-04T08:28:00.000+11:00

I'm not a big fan of the song, but I do like the sentiment. Make sure you watch the interviews after the music is done.

Thanks Tim.

The silence of the Greens

2011-12-02T21:46:00.001+11:00

From Antony Green (not the Green I am referring to) - the Clarence by-election results:

21:12 - At this stage Labor have a majority in only two booths, Red Rock and Nymboida. In Nymboida, the Greens actually came first on the first preferences.

I would think a disappointing night for the Greens who have made no advances despite campaigning against coal seam gas and antimony mining. Perhaps the anti-CSG vote went with Labor?

The Greens ended up with 7.2% of the vote, a 0.3% rise on the last election. Given all the fuss that has been stirred up about coal seam gas and fracking, that's an incredibly bad result. Funnily enough, a search of the NSW Greens website produces none of the usual post-election crowing about how the Greens are on the rise and are a force to be reckoned with blah blah blah.

Movie set

2011-11-28T21:56:00.001+11:00

The Great Gatsby is currently being filmed in Sydney, starring Leonardo di Caprio. Quite a lot of stuff was being shot around the old White Bay power station site recently, I took these two photos from the ANZAC bridge today - note the big green screen and the line of vintage cars. Sweet.

Just think - those poor buggers rushing past in their cars had no idea what was going on just below them.

Small, pleasing things

2011-11-28T21:41:00.001+11:00

Got home this afternoon and:

the little kids preferred to spend all their time outside until dark, squirting each other with the hose, playing on the swings, digging in the "mud" (my garden) or just running around like lunatics. I got home to find one quietly colouring in a Peppa Pig stencil, and the other building a scene out of Lego. No interest was expressed in the TV.
teenagers did the washing up without a word of protest (and did it very nicely too)
one teen looked at the setting sun, looked at their bike, said "I'm off" and shot off for a half hour sunset bike ride - for no other reason than to get some exercise and to photograph a lovely sunset over the water.
teens found frozen berries (in the freezer of course) and then fought over who got the blender first. They prefer a fruit smoothie to soft drinks (although the sugar content is probably the same). Mango, banana and orange juice beat a pure berry mix (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and mulberries)
I started counting the books in the little kids room and gave up when I hit 400. And that was one bookshelf (admittedly, the books are not the same size as say a Harold Robbins opus). Both youngsters get very upset if Dad is too tired to read them at least 2 books each. (Where the hell did all those books come from? Presents from family and friends; hand-me downs; bookstalls at school fetes where you can pick them up for 20c each).

That's a plane up there

There are times when I think this family might just work out OK.

Maintenance day

2011-11-26T20:26:00.001+11:00

Riding in the rain isn't that good for bikes. Water gets into everything, along with the odd bit of mud and grit, and that doesn't make for rapid forward motion. I pulled the front wheel off today and gave it a spin - I could feel how gritty the bearings felt. When I pulled the axle apart, about a teaspoon of water ran out of where it shouldn't have. The two "shiny" bearings were on one side, the two muddy ones on the other. I cleaned the whole lot up enough to stop it from seizing up on my next outing, but clearly it's time to go shopping for some new stuff.

I also checked the rim wear by holding a spanner up flush with the rim. It should be flush with the spanner handle, not as concave as a waning moon. I've had rims wear to the point before where they gave up, cracked and then exploded. Thankfully, I was not on the bike at the time - having a rim explode and then getting stuck in your forks would be a recipe for going A over T. With a car, you just replace the disks on the disk brakes rather than the whole wheel - in the case of a bike, the brake disk also happens to be your wheel rim.

I could get the wheel rebuilt with a new rim and new innards in the hub, but I think I'll just replace the whole damned lot. I have replaced the wheels entirely twice before, and had two wheel rebuilds. Did someone once say that cycling was cheap?

And I thought I had a hard time on the road

2011-11-26T09:16:00.000+11:00

Bugger me, there are some close calls in this video.

What Italian debt crisis?

2011-11-25T21:17:00.000+11:00

Two weeks ago, Jessica Irvine, the SMH's economics writer published this about Italy and its debt:

Italy is the world's eighth largest economy, with government debt of $2.6 trillion, exceeding the debts of all the PIGS combined. The markets seem unimpressed by the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, finally falling on his sword.

On Wednesday night, investors pushed the market interest rate for Italian sovereign debt to 7.48 per cent, crucially above the 7 per cent rate that eventually forced the PIGS to seek bailout funding.

The markets are now trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy, one in which their action of pushing up the cost of Italian borrowing increases the likelihood that their worst fear will come to pass - the Italian government being unable to make payments on its debts.

As usual, that got me thinking - and not in a good way about the quality of the economics degree that Jessica gained.

When I first read it, I got the impression that all Italian government debt is floating rate debt. How else would an increase in interest rates cause the government to be unable to make payments on its debts?

Let's compare it to a household mortgage. You borrow a million bucks to buy a house, signing up when interest rates are 6%. You're paying $60k per year in interest.

Then interest rates just to 9%, and you're now up for $90k per year - a 50% jump in interest payments. Ouch.

However, as we know, when you take out a mortgage these days, you an choose a fixed rate mortgage, a floating rate mortgage, or a mix of the two. You might choose to borrow $500k at fixed rates and $500k at floating. That way, your interest bill would not climb to $90k - it would "only" rise to $75k.

Government debt is the same - it is a big melting pot of all sorts of debt instruments. You can find out all about Italian bonds here. There are BTPs, BOTs, CTZs, BTP Euro i and CCT.

If you go to the Italian Treasury website, you can see this graph on the historical structure of debt and average life.

What does this graph tell me? Well, the percentage of floating rate debt has decreased from over 60% in 1993 to about 20% today, and the average life of the debt has gone up from about 4 years to 7 years. In other words, the wogs have a lot of medium term, fixed rate debt. The next graph comes from here.

So, how is this going to cause the wogs to default?

Good question.

They have three choices.

Let's say you owe $100,000. The debt is structured so that it is split into 10 tranches of $10,000 each, and each is repayable one year after the next. That is, you have to repay $10k this year, $10k next year, $10k the year after etc. However, as each tranche falls due, you can refinance it if you want to - and up until now, that's what you've been doing. When your $10k payment falls due, you pay it off and immediately borrow another $10k.

Let's also assume that you were able to borrow each tranche at 5%. That is, you're paying $500 per tranche per year, or $5,000 in total.

Then you find that you're about to be slugged with an interest rate hike - when you next refinance, you'll be paying 7%.

So if we choose to rollover our debt, we'll be paying (9 x $500) + (1 x $700) = $5,200.

Not exactly the end of the world, is it?

Now, I said that you have three choices.

When it comes time to refinance, you can:

Pay down some debt, which will reduce your interest bill
Borrow the same amount as before, or
Borrow more

If the wogs choose option 1, they'll have no worries about defaulting. If they choose option 2, they'll be paying more and more each year as they roll over, but it's not like they'll face a dramatic increase all at once. If they decide to borrow more - well, they'll be in the shit. And deservedly so.

Therefore, when I re-read this statement:

The markets are now trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy, one in which their action of pushing up the cost of Italian borrowing increases the likelihood that their worst fear will come to pass - the Italian government being unable to make payments on its debts.

I think, "No, you bonehead. What the markets are saying is that it is time for you to selection option 1, rather than option 3". The problem that they have is that they are completely incapable of getting their budget under control, and they expect other people to bail them out. Screw that.

I don't think Jessica gets the idea of what a market is. "The markets" might be fronted by a bunch of well paid, well fed wankers in sharp suits, but standing behind them are millions of small investors and pensioners. Brokers are simply managing the aggregated savings of tens of millions of people like you ane me. Are you happy to lend all your superannuation to Italy at 5%, knowing that you might lose 50% of it, or would you prefer to scale back the amount you lend them, and charge them a higher interest rate to guard against the risk of them not paying you back?

And when idiots like Jessica talk about "the banks taking a haircut", what she means is bank shareholders, which includes the superannuation of people like you and me, because our super funds all hold bank shares. So the pain of profligate Italian politicians is sheeted home to us - those that work and save and put something aside for the future.

Critical mess

2011-11-25T19:25:00.001+11:00

I see those tools from Critical Mass are out making life a misery for motorists again tonight. I did a ride with them 6 years ago, not long after I bought my bike, but before I started blogging, and I swore to never do it again. I was sure I took photos on the ride, but I have just searched the archive and there are none to be found. Here are my thoughts from that time:

Friday was my first anthrapologicalexpedition for a while. I didn't exactly don my pith helmet - instead, Idonned my bike helmet and took part in a "Critical Mass" ride aroundthe CBD and over the Harbour Bridge. My reasons for doing so were two fold- first, you only get to cycle over the Bridge once a year, and secondly, Ineed the exercise to help me sleep.

Let me just say at the start that Ihave never seen such an enormous crowd of ferals gathered together in oneplace in my life. It was like half the township of Nimbin had jumped (orcycled) into the local teleporter and materialised in Hyde Park. It's notlike you see lots of ferals together in one place very often - they're like thehomeless. You see the odd mad sod wandering down the street muttering tohimself about alien space rays before begging for cash, but it's not like yousee a tent city of them in Hyde Park once a month.

Critical Mass, like many things inour society, appears to be an import. I have heard and read about similargroups overseas. Funnily enough, all the members appeared to be madlyagainst globalisation, but I doubt they would see the funny side in them beingmembers of a globalised cult. It would not surprise me to find that this cult started in that fountain of allthings evil - the US.

The idea behind Critical Mass is abit like those feminist "reclaim the streets" marches that usedto happen with regular monotony in the 80's and 90's. You never seem tohear about them these days. I just scanned the SMH and there was nothingin there about this ride either. I guess they are no longer newsworthyevents. Boring. Give us something new and exciting to report!

Anyway, the original concept wasthat a group of cyclists would get together once a month and ride as a groupslowly around an area blocking traffic at peak hour and "reclaiming thestreets" for cyclists. What started as a radical anti-authoritarianprotest movement has metamorphised into your usual well organisedboondoogle. I counted 8 police outriders on motorbikes (with lightsflashing and the whole works - I felt like I was the GG being escortedsomewhere), half a dozen marked cop cars and most of the cycle cops in town(all on their bikes of course), which numbered 20 or 30. It was wellorganised chaos. The only thing we were missing was a Police chopper,some cops on horses and the dog squad.

The web site said to meet at theHyde Park fountain at 5.30pm. I duly saddled up and rode into townexpecting to arrive just before 5.30pm and then we'd all join up and ride overthe bridge. Bzzzz - wrong. I met up with two other blokes on theANZAC bridge and we rode in together, and then we sat around near the fountainfor an hour whilst the ferals got organised. That was no mean feat. I was amazed that so many had made it there almost on time, since very fewseemed to own a watch. Keeping time is just so capitalist, man. Tooorganised for me. In fact quite a few didn't seem to own shoeseither. They did however own an impressive collection of haircuts andfacial jewellry, and many sported shirts promoting the Greens, or stickersproclaiming that, "No Iraqi died to provide fuel for this bike". No, but some probably died to supply the diesel for the ship that brought it tothis country.

The police were of course all thereat 5.30pm, lined up in a neat row, looking on with bemused expressions at thislaager of louts. Those that had been on one of these rides previouslywere not bothering to look at their watches, as they knew something I didn't -they never start on time (I found this out from chatting to a cop later on whohad done a few). One thing the copdid tell me is that the bike cops don't shave their legs. They had beentaking bets to see if anyone would dare to wax their legs, but none had beengame enough to do it yet.

I wrote last year about how I triedto pick the political persuasion of people cycling in from the North Shore, andhow I thought most of them probably voted Liberal. Well, her sample wouldtell you that most cyclists in Sydney are scruffy, ride bikes with a resalevalue of between $30 and $60, and ride them because they can't afford to buy anice second hand 4WD. My survey of commuters coming over theHarbour Bridge on the other hand tells me that most cyclists are welldressed, well groomed professionals that ride bikes that cost them between $800and $5000 and they probably own a BMW or an Audi.

As I was sucking on my Chuppa Chup,a dumpy lesbian asked me if she could use my bike pump. Oh for crying outloud, who seeks to embark on a ride over the Harbour Bridge with flattyres! That about said it all for this crowd as far as I wasconcerned. They were so fixated on photocopying the pamphlets for theanti-war teach-in at Sydney Uni the following day (I am not kidding), that theyforgot to check and prepare their means of transport. Frankly, I thoughtteach-ins died out back in the 20th century - like at the end of the1960's. Next thing, they'll be sporting afros and cork shoes. Thereally hilarious thing about the bike pump episode is that they dyke did notknow how to use a bike pump! She normally took her bike to the petrolstation and filled up there from the air hose. My pump was no use as hertyres used car type valves, but I spotted a bloke that had the right type ofpump and borrowed that on her behalf. It was the same type of pump thatwe used as kids - you had to screw a flexy hose into the end and then attachthat to the valve. She had no idea how to do it. I had to show herhow to use the pump, and then pump up her tyres as she had no upper bodystrength. Strewth!

Rent-a-crowd really was the bestdescription for this mob. I am certain that some probably turned up onfoot with "save the dolphin" banners and went, "bugger, wrongweek, different protest" and walked home. I did spot a few peoplewearing lycra like myself (which denotes firstly someone that has a high enoughincome to spend $250 on lycra shorts and a shirt and secondly denotes someonethat cycles far enough to work up a sweat), but the rest were wearinghemp. Personally, I would not like to ride very far in hemp. It soundsmuch too much like a hair shirt to me. Wearing hemp makes you a"milk and bread" cyclist - ie, someone who rides to the local shopfor some milk and bread, and no further. The idea of doing a round tripcommute of say 35 kms would probably be as alien to this mob as eating a T-bone(especially a whale T-bone steak).

Eventually, the mob left Hyde Parkand rode straight into the normal peak hour traffic jam near David Jones. We sat in traffic for a good ten minutes before getting to the point where wecould do a lap around Town Hall and then on to the Bridge. The Town Halllap was interesting, as we stopped at the intersection outside the Town Hall(which is a major intersection) and we stopped there for a good 10minutes. Many bemused pedestrians pulled out cameras and camera phonesand took photos of this mass of hemp clad, cheering maniacs in the square infront of them. Most of the mob got an enormous kick out of all theattention. Personally, I thought it was like be a gladiator in front of abaying mob and I was waiting for someone to release the lions from the QVBbuilding. My favourite bit in the traffic jam was when one of the cyclecops spotted a bloke in a car yapping on his mobile - he was right next tome. He rode over, stuck his head in the window and said something like,"That's a really dumb idea mate", and I swear the motorist just aboutpooped himself there and then. The look on his face was a sight tobehold. He got away without a ticket though - lucky sod.

First point about protests - manyare doing it for the kicks. There is a bit of a thrill being the focus ofattention of so many people, including the odd older guy in a suit who tookexception to people on two wheels and who yelled abuse about, "people whowant to get home". From what I could see, most of the people in towncouldn't care less about getting home. After all, it was Fridaynight. Most wanted to get to the pub, and then worry about gettinghome. I guess the heckler has an evil wife waiting at home who willmake his life difficult unless he is home by 6.30pm on the dot. Weblocked traffic for quite a while, which didn't seem to bother too many cardrivers. Since the cross city tunnel opened, traffic through the city hasbeen a nightmare, and I reckon many didn't even notice the impact of ourride. It was just another horror Friday night in Sydney traffic for them.

After Town Hall, we meandered uppast Parliament House and then onto the Bridge. All traffic going northhad been shutdown, so we rode across the Cahill Expressway with no cars, andthen onto a car free bridge (at least the four western lanes were carfree). Traffic was banked up for miles, and most drivers had given up andgotten out of their cars to have a look. Some tooted and waved in afriendly manner, but one Guido got grumpy and shook his fist and said a fewchoice words. We just rang our bells and tooted our horns and laughed athim. Poor sod. I look at these Guidos in their flash cars andwonder how much they owe on them, and how long it will be before they arerepossessed and end up back in a car yard on Parramatta Road waiting for thenext idiot with small balls to come by.

Note about greenies that don't cyclemuch - they might be skinny, but mung beans are not good for fitness orspeed. They rode at a stately 6-10 km/h, which is slower than Iwalk. I nearly fell over a few times (I saw one courier who did in factfall over - they never travel at under about 50 km/h, especially when they areon the footpath). Once we hit open road, I put my feet down and made itto the middle of the bridge right behind the cops on motor bikes. At thatpoint we stopped and waved at people above us doing the Bridgeclimb, and waitedfor the rest of the pack to catch up. I looked back down the bridge atseveral thousand tree huggers that filled all four lanes and stretched all theway from the middle of the bridge back to the expressway. I don't knowwhere these people live, but there were a lot of them. It was likewatching fleas climbing up a dogs back.

There werethree hippies in particular that stuck out. One had a face likethe Elephant Man. He was a very wierd looking guy. His jaw wasabout six inches longer than normal and his teeth stuck out in alldirections. Ick. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fans may rememberthe name of the character that Arthur Dent kept on killing, and the descriptionof how his fangs stuck out all over the place when they finally met and hetried to kill Arthur. That was this guy.

Another guy had what looked like ashopping trolley attached to the front of his bike, and by the look of it, itcontained all his worldy possessions. He looked like a homeless guy thatalso had a bike insread of a shopping trolley or enormous collection of garbagebags. The last guy was clearly retarded. I guess he rode a bikebecause he did not have the brain power to drive a car. He was alsoriding a BMX type bike, which is not the best thing for riding anydistance.

Here I was thinking that cycling wouldintroduce me to a world of elite athletes, and instead I end up with a bunch ofsoy drinking, tree hugging, hemp wearing, bearded, homeless dykes andwierdos. To cap it off, we visited some relatives on theweekend and I passed a pack of Accenture guys out for a ride. Now that is what I expected - to be grooving with a bunch of fit, highly paid,globetrotting MBA-type consultants. In future, I will have to read thefine print on these bike ride brochures more closely.

After the rest of the mung beanpowered mob arrived near the middle of the bridge, we continued on our merryway and rode up through North Sydney to where the the Friday night noodlemarkets are supposed to be held. However, as a sign of intensely goodorganisation, we arrived on the one Friday night when there were no noodlemarkets. That meant hopping back on the bike before the speeches about noblood for oil started (and before my sweat started freezing) and zipping backhome. It took me a good two hours or more to make it to North Sydney andabout 45 minutes to get home. Never ride with Greenies. They can'tshut up, and if they ride too fast, they can't talk about their latest workshopbased around recycling sheep toenail clippings, so they dawdle. On theother hand, they can't be too poor, as most had a fairly expensive digitalcamera lurking in one of their hemp shirt pockets (and hemp shirts are not thatcheap). I like to call it disaffected hippyism.

There was one other point that Ialmost forgot - the intense religiousity of the whole thing. Apart fromMr and Ms Mungbean getting an almost sexual thrill out of the attention thatthey were recieving, they were also all totally manic about their passionsregarding War, oil, cars, trees, hemp and other things on the Greenagenda. I have never been exposed to such a manic, committed mob. They were as fervent a crowd as you could ever hope to meet. I couldsuddenly see where suicide bombers come from, along with the members of theSpanish Inquisition. For this mob, it was all black and white. Unlike us cynics, who see plenty of gray and don't get wound up about much,this lot were fanatics. They had that mindset - that light in the eyes,that makes them very, very dangerous.

That's why they should all beconscripted into the Foreign Legion and shipped off to fight in Syria. Ifthey can be indoctrinated so well with the Green agenda, it shouldn't be toohard to turn them into gung-ho types.

The wet that was

2011-11-25T19:02:00.001+11:00

Bloody hell, it's been a sodden week. Not many photos this week as the camera has been living in a plastic bag to stop it seizing up (again). The good thing about wet weather is that the pedestrian traffic plummets by about 90%, so although the risk of crashing through sliding into something in the wet goes up, the risk of crashing into an idiot wandering along on the wrong side of the path whilst they adjust their iPod settings goes way down.

Cycling numbers also drop quite a bit in this sort of weather - it sorts out the girls from the hard nuts.

It's not like we're going to dissolve or drown in a bit of rain. It's just bloody water!

I did have one close call this week though - a bloody idiot taxi driver swerved from his lane into mine (without indicating) and then slammed on the brakes in order to pick up a fare. I had a choice of going into the back of him or around him. I'm glad I didn't try to go around him, as I would have been cleaned up by a bus in the lane next door. As it was, I pulled up about an inch off his bumper, fuming and shaking at how close a call it had been. What infuriated me the most is that I couldn't get around the side of his car to yell at him because there was a whole line of buses going past. Why he didn't wait for me to pass and then pull over is beyond me. Maybe he saw a taxi coming up behind me, and just had to jump across or lose the fare?

Idiot.

Fascinating search result

2011-11-24T21:56:00.001+11:00

I went to the SMH and typed "climategate" into their search engine.

Last story on this subject was published a month ago. The most recent three stories were:

Chilling news for climate sceptics
Majority report: why consensus is all the rage
Climate-change scientist cleared in US over emails

Yep, that's fair and balanced reporting alright.

Who are the 1%? Part two

2011-11-21T21:49:00.001+11:00

You can slice the population up in numerous ways when it comes to determining who is in the top 1% and who isn't. (Can a grammar nazi let me know if that should be "who" or "whom").

I prefer to look at the entire population, and then calculate the top 1%.

Others prefer to look at just those paying income tax, which reduces the pool quite considerably - especially now that the lowest income tax threshold is being raised considerably.

You can also use families to do your calculations.

I've used individuals because of the language being used in this debate. Take this quote from Wikipedia:

The protesters' slogan We are the 99% refers to the growing difference in wealth in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population.

Note the last 5 words - "the rest of the population". When you say, "the rest of the population", to me, that means everyone. It means my kids, who are too young to be working (and earning). It means my parents in law, who are retired and on the pension. It means my sister in law, who was a stay at home mum for a few years after her kids were born, and therefore wasn't earning. It means a relative, who went gallivanting off overseas for a few years, doing the hippy thing and existing on the sniff of an oily rag. The quote does not say, "all those earning over $20,000 per year".

A document that has been quoted as a distant source for all this discontent is this CBO report on trends in household income. It's worth a read. Here's some points:

Due to the IT revolution starting in the 1990s, workers with better educations and skills earned a lot more money than those with poor educations and low skills
An increase in foreign born workers has put downward pressure on the wages of low skilled work
The entry of women into the workforce has increased the inequality between families. It's obvious that if both parents are working in one family, and only one is working in another, then there will be inequality between the two.
Well educated, highly skilled people tend to marry the same type of person. If both of them work, they will make a lot more money than a poorly educated, lowly skilled couple.
For those at the top, a lot of their income came in the form of capital gains during the stock market boom. ie, those that invested their money made more money. Those that invested nothing made nothing.
Changes in the media and sports industries saw a boom in payments to actors and athletes - but there's not as many of them as you might think
employees in the financial and legal professions made up a larger share of the highest earners than people in those other groups. The authors concluded that their findings are most consistent with the theories that technical changes have enhanced the value of certain skills and that the increasing scale of corporate and financial activity has raised the value of corporate executives and financial professionals, rather than that weak corporate governance has led to excessive compensation.
An alternative study found that nonfinancial executives, managers, and supervisors made up the largest subgroup of the highest-income households, accounting for 31 percent of the top percentile. Medical professionals were the second largest occupational category, making up 16 percent, while financial professionals accounted for 14 percent and lawyers for 8 percent.

What do I make of all this?

Get a job at Macquarie Bank and invest your money. Marry someone else who works at Macquarie Bank.

But ignoring the bankers for a second, let's think about the sorts of people who have climbed into the 1%. They're just as likely to be people who started early at Google and Apple, the engineers who took a punt on working for Skype, the Dilberts who came up with the idea for Angry Birds and Twitter and a whole host of IT gadgets and software. They're the doctors who invented new surgical tools and techniques, like better knees and hips and pacemakers and hearing aids.

Do you really think that the people who invented Angry Birds, who are now probably in the top 0.01%, are really that evil and nasty? Are they to blame for the calamities of the world? And why do you want to take their money off them? If you want to some cash, invent your own stupid game and take it to market.

Lots of US students doing useless degrees

2011-11-21T21:29:00.001+11:00

One reason the Occupy Wall Street swampies are so angry is the amount of student debt many of them have racked up, which they now can't pay off because they can't get the sort of job they thought they'd get when they started uni.

Carpe Diem has a great table showing the sorts of degrees that were awarded in the US in 2009.

Out of 1.7 million graduating students:

21,000 studied "family and consumer sciences" (whatever the hell that is)
94,000 studied psychology (is there really a demand for so many psych graduates?)
9,000 did "area, ethnic, cultural and gender studies" - good luck to any of them getting a job
83,000 studied "communication and communication technologies", which is probably a new term for media studies with the addition of Twatter
89,000 did "visual and performing arts" - there might be one John Malkovic in there. The other 88,999 will all be serving our coffees.
31,000 did "parks, recreation, leisure and fitness studies" - I'm stuck for comment here
500,000 did what I would term "fairly useful" degrees - health, education, law (yes, I almost choked on that one) English language and literature, liberal arts, maths, architecture, science, IT and engineering.

In other words, 500,000 graduated with a good chance of employment and paying off the debt they piled up during their studies.

1.2 million graduated with a worthless fly swatter.

I wouldn't mind if our expanded higher education system was producing more nurses, better teachers and well trained engineers, scientists, agronomists, geologists and doctors; plus a good wodge of classically educated liberals arts types.

Instead, it's pretty clear that the explosive growth in higher education has mainly been in largely worthless fields. The sooner we close half the faculties, the better.

Who are the Australian 1%?

2011-11-20T07:43:00.001+11:00

You're probably thinking that the 1% is made up of squillionaires like Twiggy Forrest and Nathan Tinkler and Gina Reinhart and that fat moron who is the Collingwood president - what's his name? Eddie Maguire.

Well, think again.

There are 22 million Australians. So the 1% are the 220,000 top earners.

We have a good idea what those at the very top make - the likes of James Packer and so on. But what about the person that is the 210,000th top earner, or the 220,000th top earner?

I once found, and copied, a tax table from the Henry Tax Review. I have never been able to find it again. It broke down the number of tax payers in every income bracket from $20,000 and below to $300,000 and above. From $20k to $80k, it slices the taxpayers into $5,000 increments. Above that, it's $10,000 increments, and above $200k, it uses $25,000 increments.

There are 40,000 people earning over $300,000. So that bracket ranges from those pulling in hundreds of millions per year down to $300,000. They are the top 0.18%.

There are 60,000 people making between $250,000 and $300,000. So we are now up to 100,000 people out of our 220,000 1 percenters.

Another 50,000 make between $200,000 and $250,000. We are now up to 150,000 people.

25,000 make between $180k and $200k. That's 175,000 in total.

40,000 make between $170k and $180k. We're now up to 215,000 in total - pretty close to 1%.

55,000 make between $160k and $170k. If we include them, we're up to 270,000 people, and we're up to 1.23% of the population. So let's draw the line at just under $170,000.

What sort of people earn over $170,000?

Academics for starters. Every university has a number of well paid staffers. Monash (page 78) for instance has one earning $390k and another on $810k. Interestingly, in 2009, the top bod at Monash made $1.2 million. La Trobe (page 60) uni, home to Robert Manne, paid 3 Council members between $240k and $600k. An additional 33 Executive Officers at La Trobe made over $170k.

Plenty of politicians are in the top 1% too - especially Premiers and Ministers. The base pay of a Federal parliamentarian is $140k, but that's topped up with an electoral allowance of between $32k and $48k and $19.5k for a vehicle, plus travel allowances etc, so even saintly Bob Brown and his pack of Greentards are in the 1%.

Just about every local, state and federal department will have at least one manager in the 1%. Consider the Department of Climate Change - it has 50 managers earning over $170k! Fifty! The top person there earns $429k.

NSW Dept of Education - the Director General (page 95) is on $488k, the BER dude is on $427k (gee, wasn't he good value for money?) and there are 26 other managers making between $250k and $350k. There are another 46-55 SES officers possibly making over $170k (can't tell from the report - it's not detailed enough).

Same with Health - the DG for Health (page 205) in NSW makes $435k and her various minions are all scraping by on well over $170k. And that of course doesn't include any of the Doctors and Specialists making well over that amount. Got a cancerous lump that needs removing? Well, if you think those in the 1% are paid too much, I suggest you tell your surgeon and anaesthetist and radiologist that they are overpaid oafs who should be given a compulsory financial haircut when you're lying on the operating table about to go under.

Then there are entertainers, actors and sports stars - too numerous to mention really. And then there are the lawyers at the big end of town - especially QCs. Plus architects and accountants.

Don't forget union officials, who are really on the gravy train - like Michael Williamson at the HSU, pocketing $350,000 per year. It's hard to tell what other union officials are making, because their annual reports are so opaque. For instance, the RTBU (Victoria) paid a total of $732k to its officials last year, but the report does not list who those officials are and how much each was paid.

I could go on and on for hours here, but it's a hot day and I feel like a swim.

I just wanted to make the point that the top 1% is not made up of fat cats in large financial institutions grinding the faces of the poor. The 1% is not made up of plutocrats swanning around in private jets and swimming in champagne.

Friday photos

2011-11-18T21:44:00.001+11:00

Is it Christmas already? Can I open my presents tomorrow?

Once again, I notice that the Sydney City Council has gone with an insipid non-Christian theme for its Christmas banners. It's not like I'm a churchy God-botherer, but even I recognise the religious significance of the date. Memo to Council - the Myer and David Jones department stores were not around 2000 years ago. It's not all about shopping.

After a few days of rain, we had a misty morning for once. This photo doesn't do it justice, but I could barely see the bridge at the end of the Bay. For around here, that's misty.

The rain kept 95% of the walkers and runners in doors, so they were out in force this morning after being cooped up inside for a few days.

I love how relaxed recumbents look, but jeez I worry about being squashed on one.

More mist - the pillars of the ANZAC bridge in the morning foggy stuff. OK, it's not San Francisco, but it's as good as it gets.

Heavily loaded.

Could barely see the Harbour Bridge either.

A closer view - you can just see a vague grey coat hanger in the middle of the photo.

Lopsided.

Queuing up to get home.

And now for some light reading - Man vs machine. A cool article for lovers of bikes and motor bikes.

2011-11-18T21:13:00.001+11:00

Got given a few boxes of liquor chocolates a month or so ago. Didn't pay any attention to how they were stored.

Had a few stinking hot days - the liquor has evaporated from the centres and the chocolates have imploded.

They still taste alright - but lack the kick that they would have had originally.

Note to self - in future, scoff chocolate as soon as you get it. Don't put it away for a rainy day.

Obama's visit - where were all the demonstrators?

2011-11-17T20:56:00.001+11:00

The last time a sitting US President visited Australia, there was a great deal of fuss about the security precautions (and how heavy handed they'd be) and there were quite a few demonstrations. I even went to one just to see what it was all about.

I haven't digested a lot of media lately, but the small amount that I have read didn't mention a single demonstration against President Obama. Hmm - why would that be?

We also didn't have any local politicians bagging the President, like we had last time.

Troops out, Hicks home: protesters
March 17, 2007

Around 400 protesters have marched through central Sydney to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq war.

The rally, organised by Stop the War Coalition, was one of many around Australia and the world this weekend.

Police escorted the banner-waving marchers down George Street, which was briefly closed to traffic as protesters made their way down to Belmore Park.

The demonstrators called for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the federal government to bring Australian terror suspect David Hicks home from US detention at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Before the march, federal Greens senator Kerry Nettle reminded the crowd assembled at Town Hall that she and party leader Bob Brown had been ejected from parliament in 2003.

The Greens duo made loud interjections about Iraq and wore shirts referring to Hicks during US President George Bush's address to a joint sitting of the two houses.

"Four years on, how things have changed," Senator Nettle said.

"The issue of Iraq is the disaster we all said it would be.

"The predictions have not only come true - it's worse."

President of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties David Burnie told protesters that Hicks' detention for so long without charge was an issue that had implications for all Australians.

Mr Burnie claimed the Guantanamo Bay facility was not a detention centre but a "torture centre".

"It's setting up a precedent which devalues human rights across the world," Mr Burnie said.

Odd - Guantanamo is still open for business (although Hicks has been released). Iraq doesn't seem to be going to badly these days, and we still have troops in Afghanistan. So - where the hell are the Greens and the protesters? Normally, Bob Brown is a human headline at times like these - but all he did was fawn over the President.

Lazy bowel syndrome

2011-11-13T11:25:00.001+11:00

I've heard of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but I am now witnessing Lazy Bowel Syndrome in action.

Whenever we ask Teenager to do something, the response is, "I've got to go to the toilet!"

"Clean you room".

"I need to crap!"

"Hang up your clothes"

"I'm busting!"

"Mow the lawn"

"I need to go - right now!"

He then hangs around in the toilet until he thinks the coast is clear - ie, we have forgotten about the task at hand. Unfortunately for him, we cottoned onto this behaviour some time ago, and we just hang around chuckling at him until he emerges - and then he's put back on task.

The hilarious thing is that he thinks he's getting away with it.

Being a Dickhead's Cool

2011-11-13T08:46:00.001+11:00

Thank you Guido - this is a great video.

Michael Moore - definitely part of the 1%

2011-11-12T16:13:00.001+11:00

Poor Michael Moore - it's tough being in the 1%, but trying to act like you're not.

Check out his vacation home. Not a bad little pile.

Moore made his money fair and square - I don't begrudge the fat bastard any of it. He should either accept that he's very rich and successful, or give 99% of his wealth away and go and live quietly in the suburbs like the rest of us. His hypocrisy is what drives me nuts.

Tuesday

2011-11-08T21:12:00.003+11:00

Bugger me, what a day. It was as steamy as a sauna this morning - the photo below really doesn't do the mist any justice. And then it just poured down on the way home - a ripper of a storm came through. I was having trouble seeing where I was going due to the volume of water pouring off my head and into my eyes. Still, it was a nice cool ride home after a stinkingly humid day. Only downside was the lightning bolt that crashed to earth about a hundred yards to my right as I came off the ANZAC Bridge - caused me to jump about a foot to the left. As long as it doesn't start hailing, I don't care.

The pussies at work on the other hand.... they refused to leave the office because it was raining, and they had to walk across 10 feet of uncovered pavement on the way to the train station. Sheesh!

I hope I am not this slack when it comes to packing Xmas parcels for the troops

2011-11-07T18:59:00.005+11:00

Geez, if it wasn't for Kae, I don't know what I'd do.

The deadline for sending Christmas packages to the troops is 9 December - read all about it here.

Now - get cracking and get packing.

Wednesday photos

2011-11-02T21:21:00.001+11:00

Geez, I like the above photo. Not for the bike - because the light and colour seems to crisp. Must have remembered to wipe the sweat off the camera lens before heading out.

Got no idea what these guys were filming, but there appeared to be a bike following this rig!

Rowers in the murky morning light. Good thing these shells have lights on them these days.

Friday photos

2011-10-30T09:24:00.002+11:00

Hell's bells - been flat out lately and rarely have enough time for posting.

"Mad duck adventure sports" - just goes to show you can stick an advertisement almost anywhere these days. And there's no such thing as a "bum" spot to put one.

The rowers seem to be racing every morning when I ride past the club house - this is just a small selection of what I saw this week. On some days, you could almost walk across the Bay from shell to shell.

Mixed nuts - from the very racy to the very relaxed, and everything in between.

George St early in the morning - although it is a slight uphill all the way to the Town Hall, I like to race the traffic all the way there. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose - but most of the time, it's not too hard to keep pace with the cars. Due to the density of traffic lights and buses, there's no reason why a reasonably fit cyclist on a good bike should hold anyone up.

Speaking of racing, commuting has an interesting cultural difference to riding with a training pack. When on a training ride, you'll get called to the front to set the pace and act as a windbreak for those following behind - everyone does a turn. Getting on the front is something that you have to do - you'll get yelled at if you don't.

With commuting though, the opposite tends to hold true. If you overtake another commuter, it's seen as a mortal insult, and a death race will then ensue with the bloke you passed going hell for leather to get back in front. Weird.

And there are those who are in such a burning hurry, they'll duck through the stalled cars at red lights. I'm not keen on this - if the traffic conditions change and the cars start moving, you can find yourself stranded. Plus it's illegal. So make that stupid and illegal as reasons not to do it.

Here endeth the experiment with cheap tyres

2011-10-26T22:00:00.001+11:00

Not long ago, I had to buy a new tyre in a hurry - the old one was puncturing like crazy because it was down to the canvas. I pulled in at the closest bike shop, bought a cheap tyre (only had cash on me, and not much at that) and that was sufficient to get me home without another flat.

Since then, I've had nothing but flats. Sometimes two in a day. The cheap tyre has given me more flats than the old one gave me in a year.

The final straw came today when a fellow cyclist (much more experienced than I) looked at the tyre and exclaimed "That's a really cheap and shitty tyre!" I had to agree, since I had changed yet another flat on the way to work this morning.

I now have an expensive, kevlar-lined tyre on the bike. The cheap, shitty one is where it belongs - in the bin.

Another reason to dislike bike lanes

2011-10-26T21:54:00.001+11:00

Weather has been a bit damp of late - not pouring down, just the odd bit of drizzle. Certainly enough to put the "slip" into slippery road surface.

Cycling isn't made any easier when idiots paint cycle lanes with green paint that is SLIPPERY WHEN WET! What morons thought that idea up? Do they think that cyclists are afraid of water, and never go out in the rain?

I was behind a bloke at the lights last night, and not long after he took off when the light went green, his back wheel almost went out from underneath him as he put down just a bit too much power on greasy green stuff. He went sideways in a nice power slide, managed to stay upright and recovered beautifully. It's not like he was going for broke - we were accelerating at moderate pace up a gentle incline. If cyclists are doing power slides in the drizzle, the friction coefficient of the paint must be negligible.

Funnily enough, I was getting some more work done on the bike today, and all the mechanics in the bike shop were bitching about the useless green paint as well. The mechanics were all string beans - whipcord muscle on a skinny frame - the sort of blokes who have massive power to weight ratios. I imagine they'd find their back wheel breaking out on a regular basis on the stupid green stuff.

Bike lanes are supposed to make life safer for cyclists. I'm so glad that the retards in charge of building them have managed to add a big chunk of risk, and to tilt the balance back to "danger red". Life on a bike was getting too boring.

Are the Greens really childless?

2011-10-23T22:03:00.002+11:00

I've read a number of political stories over the last year or so that have categorised the Greens as a bunch of childless, Mercedes driving rich people. How close is that perception to reality?

One indicator is the sort of people they elect to represent them.

Here's the current list of Greens MPs in NSW and their known family status:

Greens

David Shoebridge lives in Sydney with his partner Patricia and their two daughters.

John Kaye - n/a

Cate Faehrmann - n/a

Jan Barham - n/a

Jeremy Buckingham lives in the beautiful provincial city of Orange in central western NSW with his wife Sarah and two boys, Eden and James.

Jamie Parker -n/a

Lee Rhiannon - has three adult children and lives with her partner in Sydney.

Summary - 7 reps with 7 kids between them. That's a pretty simple average to calculate - one child per rep.

How about the Labor party? Rather than grind through the whole lot, I just looked at the Shadow Cabinet:

Labor

In case you don't want to read through the whole list, there are 16 of them and they have 34 kids between them - an average of over double what the Greens have. The Greens have two kids max - some of these MPs have 4 or 5. One who didn't have kids of her own has fostered kids. Only two out of the 16 have never had kids, whereas 4 out of 7 Greens appear to have never had kids.

Does the stereotype fit? You decide. (And Jamie Parker certainly drove a big Mercedes before the election. He used to park it some distance from political meetings and walk so that he wouldn't be photographed arriving in a huge lump of luxury German metal. Got no idea what he drives now).

----------------

John Robertson has lived in Western Sydney for over 20 years, and he is raising his three children there with wife Julie.

Linda Burney has a son and a daughter. Her partner for a number of years until his death was Rick Farley.

Michael Daley lives in Maroubra and is married with four children.

Barbara Perry - A mother of five young boys

Paul Gerard Lynch - n/a

Robert Furolo has lived locally for many years and is the proud father of two beautiful children

Sophie Cotsis is married with two children.

Andrew McDonald and Jenny have lived and worked in South West Sydney since 1990. They have two sons.

Penny Sharpe has been a foster carer for young women aged 15 – 17

Luke Foley is married to Edel and has three children

Nathan Rees - n/a

Mick Veitch is married to Adrienne and has four children, and one granddaughter. He and his wife are foster parents.

Carmel Tebbutt has lived in Newtown, Stanmore and Marrickville. She currently lives in Marrickville with her husband and her son

Steve Whan lives in Queanbeyan with his wife and two children.

Adam Searle lives in the Blue Mountains with his partner and their three children.

Tania Mihailuk - My husband Alex and I live in Bankstown with our young children Larissa, Matthew and baby son Daniel.

Anyone for chocolate?

2011-10-22T22:02:00.001+11:00

Can't make it to Newtown on Saturday 29 October for a hot chocolate - got a pre-existing engagement. However, feel free to pop down there and partake of one of their delicious beverages. And try not to spill any hot stuff on a hippy while you're there.

Occupy Sydney - three views of the swampies

2011-10-20T21:04:00.002+11:00

I paid a visit to Martin Place whilst on the way into work earlier this week. Here is the swampy camp from three angles. It had rained the night before, so I guess only the diehards were left. Or those with water proof sleeping bags.

The bored cops didn't outnumber the swampies - but it was close.

I noticed that their numbers were slightly inflated by a couple of winos that sleep here all the time. I wonder what the winos think of this mob moving in and "occupying" their land?

Thursday photos

2011-10-20T20:59:00.001+11:00

These aren't really photos from Thursday - they're just photos I'm putting up on Thursday. The bike had a major mechanical malfunction the other day - it totally not go. I've had things that have slowed me down - broken spokes and broken cables - but rarely something that stops me moving altogether.

It rained just before I left for work on Monday, so I put the spray jacket on.

Of course it didn't rain again for the whole trip, and I had to take it off halfway into town before I expired of heat exhaustion.

On Tuesday, it looked fine - so I didn't bother with the jacket. And then it started raining halfway in.

How's that - a photo of a cyclist right on top of a bike icon.

This is why I like riding to work early in the morning - the views are something else.

Cycling into Spring

2011-10-16T13:18:00.001+11:00

If I can, I like to have a crack at the Spring Cycle. It's a cycling promotion event - not a race - and as the name suggests, it's held in spring. Start time is 0630 in North Sydney, which is about 15km from home. I was up at 0500 and on the road early enough to make the start time. The last time I did it, I arrived a bit after 0700 and I was stuck in meandering hordes of inexperienced, unfit cyclists for the next 3 hours.

There's the Harbour Bridge in the dawn light - and me racing to get to the start line in time.

By the time I reached the city, I'd joined up with a steady trickle of riders heading north for the start.

The bastards started things 5 minutes early! I was there at 0625, and watched as the police motorbike on the far right led the first group off.

And there they go - the speedy buggers up front.

Photos are a bit out of order here - this is me heading over the bridge on the bike path.

Lots and lots of cyclists at the start, all waiting to be waved off.

Lots of middle aged blokes stretching the lycra around their tummies. I would class this event as "the middle classes at play". There were a lot of blokes my age and older, riding bikes a lot more expensive than mine, and with corporate jerseys advertising various financial institutions. It must be great to police one of these events - no drunks, few idiots and a great mass of law abiding family folk just out to enjoy themselves.

Approaching the arch of the bridge.

A breakdown crew helping with a mechanical.

Passing shadows.

I couldn't take many photos as I was always surrounded by lots of other bikes jockeying for position. Taking one hand off the handlebars was too much of a risk with that much traffic about.

Passing the Art Gallery in the Domain - the cyclists coming towards us were those first away at 0625. They were moving.

Three shadows.

Going under the fig trees in the Domain. It's a lovely place to ride around.

This bloke's jersey was about "racing begins at 40", with the website being 4tplus.com - ha ha.

Woops - well ahead of ourselves here. This is the finish line in Homebush Bay.

An event like this has lots of starts and stops - one reason I wanted to get away early was that after 0700, the crowding gets so bad, you spend more than half your time braking to avoid people in front.

Tim Blair would hate this - there were people walking around all the cyclists at the finish line handing out copies of the Daily Telegraph - imagine that; the Telegraph supporting a cycling event!

This year's was the best I have done, mainly because I got to the start early enough to avoid the sluggish riders. Only "experienced" riders were supposed to start at that time, and I would rate myself at the bottom of the "experienced" pack - but there were hundreds there at that time who were clearly much worse than me. Over the first 10km or so, a slow sorting took place, with faster riders filtering to the front and the slower riders being dropped.

After that point, the group I was with had overtaken almost all the slow riders that got away before us, and we were able to settle into a nice rhythm where we weren't having to brake constantly for the slugs up front. The pace held at a comfortable 32km/h or so from then to the end (traffic lights and hairpin bends excepted). Like I said at the start - it's not a race, and no one was treating it as such. We spent a lot of time on narrow paths with poor sight lines where overtaking just wasn't possible because of pedestrians wandering the other way.

I'm now utterly wasted - the ride to the start from home, then the ride itself, then the ride home from the finish has done me in. It was about 4 times the distance I am used to doing in one hit, and I didn't spare myself on the few small hills along the course. Commuting gives me lots of short rides of 15-20km; my legs just aren't used to doing nearly 80km in one hit.

What it showed is that I am fitter than about 80% of the cycling population, which probably makes me fitter than 95% of the blokes my age.

And now, it's time for a nap. After some chocolate cake.

Would you buy a used Mercedes from this person?

2011-10-14T21:49:00.001+11:00

Thursday prats

2011-10-13T21:23:00.000+11:00

Another day, another shot of rowers in the sunrise. You'll have to embiggen the picture to find them.

The guy on the right was a complete prat. He was riding down the middle of the bike path with his earphones in and couldn't hear me and the bloke in yellow yelling at him from behind to move over. Yellow bloke found a spot to overtake, and pink guy was so incensed, he took off at top speed in order to overtake yellow guy.

It doesn't matter what you do or where you go - you'll always find the odd tool.

Opposites - bloke on the left has the baby seat on the back. On the right are too very fit blokes who didn't appear to be commuting - they were just riding into the city by the looks of things for a spot of training. I got the jump on them at a red light (where I know the timing of the lights) and about 2 minutes later, they caught up to me and blasted past like I was standing still. Or even going backwards. They then turned off and chose a big hill to tackle - just for shit and giggles. Bastards.

And then it was time to go home. The lady right in front of me was riding an electric bike. She hardly turned a pedal for the next few kilometres. That's fine if you don't want to crease your suit or wrinkle the stockings, but it won't make your bum any slimmer.

Oops

2011-10-12T22:16:00.000+11:00

The view you get when you get a flat tyre and leave the video camera running when you change the tube.

Occupy Wall Street - I like this

2011-10-12T21:47:00.001+11:00

Link.

Wednesday photos

2011-10-12T21:38:00.001+11:00

Today was Ride to Work day, which means Big Flipping Deal to me, since I ride almost every day. What is has meant in previous years is battling through hordes of slow moving cyclists - kind of like if we had a Every Learner Driver Drives to the Shops Day. Imagine thousands of Barinas with dented doors and Magnas with L plates tottering along at 30km/h, petrified learner drivers at the wheel.

So I got up early, avoided the crowds and managed to take a photo just as the sun was clearing the horizon - and I managed to get a rowing crew almost backlit by the rising sun. How about that?

And here's more rowing crews a few minutes later.

Cyclists really are divided neatly into two camps - those that disparage lycra, and those that swear by it (ie, those that have gone to the Dark Side). There were plenty of the former out and about today - slow moving people in casual clothes or sports clothes generally don't fit the mould of the Sydney bike commuter. I started out as one of them - and then after a bit of chafing and a lot of sweating, I made the switch. And I've never looked back. Cyclists who eschew lycra are, in my opinion, cyclists who have never ridden far enough and/or fast enough to get crotch rot on a hot day.

And then the day was over, and it was time to go home.

Flat out fixing flats

2011-10-11T17:17:00.002+11:00

Another day, another flat. Actually, two flats. Amazingly enough, the second occurred at exactly the same place as my last one - I'll have to check that stretch carefully for glass and stuff next time I go past.

The first flat was the result of a puncture patch failing to stick properly. That was the cause of one of my recent flats too - and when I got home and found that out I was ready to kick a few things around the backyard. I was starting to think that I had a shard of glass stuck in the tyre that I hadn't managed to find, but as soon as I put the tube into a bucket of water, bubbles were shooting out from the side of the most recently applied patch.

I've never had this problem with patches before. My prime suspect is the glue - my old tube ran out and I got a new kit not long ago. The old stuff stank - you could get high just by looking at it. The new stuff has no odour and no psychedelic properties. I'm wondering if it's been toned down and therefore doesn't bind properly with the rubber.

My new patch kit also came with sand paper for roughening up the tube - the old kit contained something that looked like a miniature cheese grater, and it really ripped up the rubber.

Either way, it seems like the old stuff was much better.

My resolution for tomorrow is to stop being such a cheap bastard and to go and buy three new tubes. The current ones must have 20 patches between them.

Monday photos

2011-10-10T21:01:00.001+11:00

I was up so early this morning, I was sure I was going to be taking the most incredible dawn photos. Then I stuffed around for a long time, and missed the best part of the sunrise. Looking back, I have no idea what I did between waking up and leaving that consumed so much time.

One of those industrial/architecture shots that you find in big coffee table type books on architecture. Here, you get it for free. I was trying to get the sun rising behind the Centrepoint Tower.

I'm not sure that's any better.

Here's a photo I prepared earlier. I dug it out of the archives whilst perusing the photo albums tonight.

Some of those cars are almost as old as some of my regular readers. And I bet they're in better shape too.

One of those days...

2011-10-09T14:43:00.002+11:00

Woke up this morning and thought a nice Sunday ride would be a good idea.

Dressed up, packed my kit, walked out to the bike and.... found the back tyre was flat.

Couldn't be bothered changing it. Climbed out of my gear and went back to bed.

Eventually crawled out of bed and fixed the tube, since I'll need a working tyre to get to work tomorrow. I then got really enthusiastic and washed and degreased the bike.

Went to put the back wheel on again.

Tyre was flat.

It wasn't a rogue bit of glass trapped in the tyre - it was one of my useless patching efforts. Time to buy some new tubes - the old ones are starting to get patches on top of patches.

Teenagers

2011-10-08T18:39:00.002+11:00

There I am, sitting here in front of the computer last night reading this and that.

Teenager looks over from his blood thirsty first person shooter game and looks at the article I'm reading.

"Who was Steve Jobs?"

Oh, for fuck's sake.....

Congestion heart failure

2011-10-07T19:44:00.002+11:00

I bet you're thinking, "Idiot - it's congestive heart failure". Nope - the above photo is about pedestrian congestion at peak hour when trying to get out of the city...

....and this photo is about heart failure. Ahem. It's bloody difficult taking a photo like this when ascending a grade like this in the rain. Especially when I put my foot down as I went around the bend up ahead and the back wheel broke out and went sideways. Brand new tyre as well, with tread - my legs were feeling mighty powerful and rested that day.

It's a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll

2011-10-07T19:16:00.000+11:00

AC/DC re-enactment.

Like I said - a lot of people standing around watching other people standing around.

AC/DC remake

2011-10-05T23:08:00.001+11:00

WhenLes Kenfield played the bagpipes in the classic video clip forAC/DC's LongWay to the Top,there weren't a lot of women in rock and roll.

Buttoday he will be part of a re-creation of the video clip which willbe nearly all women. The female rock and rollers will do apsychedelic interpretation of the LongWay to the Top clip- filmed on the back of a flat-bed truck for the musicshow Countdown -for the Sydney launch of the Tasmanian Mona Foma arts festival

I rode past this today - it was just a bunch of people standing around on the back of a truck doing nothing whilst the film crew faffed around.

I took some photos, but haven't had a chance to upload them yet. I'm sure they'll show a bunch of people standing around on the back of a truck doing nothing whilst the film crew faff around.

Had better days

2011-10-05T23:00:00.000+11:00

Dropped my socks in a water puddle in the shower at work
Tore a hole in the crotch of my trousers
Computer blew up
Ran out of shaving gel

Thankfully, that was the worst of it.

Now for some upside - go and watch the rather incredible education video at this link.

The Mark of Chain

2011-10-05T22:59:00.003+11:00

Teenager eyed my calf the other day and suddenly got all excited - "Hey, is that a really cool tattoo on your leg".

Nope.

It was a grease mark from where I'd leaned up against the front cog, which left an arc of black teeth up my calf. It was the Mark of Chain. Or perhaps the Mark of Cog. It's certainly the mark of a filthy bike that needs a wash and degrease.

Teenager wandered off all disappointed. I went to the bathroom where it took a good five minutes of scrubbing with a stiff brush to remove it.

Lopsided

2011-09-30T21:21:00.000+10:00

Check out this lopsided backpack. Just hopeless.

Speaking of which, I loaned Junior one of my backpacks recently - a medium sized daypack.

When I handed it over, all the excess straps had been bundled up tightly and wrapped with black electrical tape. I could jump up and down and ride at high speed and the pack didn't budge, rattle or have any flappy things flapping off it.

It was returned with straps flapping in all directions.

A certain type of person will understand why I got upset.

Crusty eyes

2011-09-30T21:16:00.000+10:00

I had one of these trees in a backyard once, and I still can't remember what they're called.

But I do know this- see all those white hairy things hanging from the flowers? At this time of the year, the trees are utterly covered in them, and there are plenty of these trees around. Which means oodles of those hairy pollen things floating around.

I rode down a local road recently and one lane was completely blanketed in the things - the road had turned a whitish-yellow.

And so when I ride, the damned things end up in my eyes all the time. Which means waking up with crusty eyes and a runny nose.

It would be so much easier to wrap myself in a cocoon and never have to interact with all this horrid natural stuff.

How much do you know about stuff?

2011-09-27T22:17:00.001+10:00

Try this exam. It's only 33 questions. Took me about 5 minutes.

Hat tip to Sean Linnane.

---

PS - I got 30 out of 33. There were two questions that I had no idea about, but I screwed up on my third wrong answer.

The average score for all 2,508 Americans taking the following test was 49%; college educators scored 55%.

Vodka, bikes and stockings don't mix

2011-09-27T22:04:00.002+10:00

Dr Gordian Fulde has an article in the Tele every week, cataloguing the drunken idiots that are carted into his emergency ward every weekend. I try and read him every week.

Also we are seeing an increasing amount of intoxicated bicycle riders at night, often with no helmet. This usually results with them falling off, just like the 28-year-old salesman who broke his jaw by hitting the road hard.

Probably riding a single speed or fixie.

When I was at uni, a mate had a party at a bar with a theme of "Dirty Doctors, Naughty Nurses and Perverted Patients". All the women dressed as doctors and most of the blokes dressed as nurses - it just turned out that way.

The bar was on the opposite side of the campus to my college. After getting full of vodka jelly shots, dancing the worm on the floor etc etc, the bar closed and I had to get home.

A mate and I both had our push bikes, so we decided to race across campus.

It was a shockingly fast race - we were both very fit and totally plastered. We rode like maniacs. Err, actually we were maniacs. We somehow managed to get across the campus alive, and then I clipped a low fence with a pedal when I was just metres from home (and victory).

I went down on the tarmac - hard. I wasn't wearing a helmet of course.

But I was wearing stockings under my dress.

Fishnet stockings.

I ripped off more skin in that crash than any crash I've had since. I probably lost more skin in that crash than in all the others combined.

Trouble was, I was shitfaced and not feeling much pain. So I went to bed.

When I woke the next morning, a scab had formed on the abraded skin.

And glued into that scab was the remains of my stockings. And my sheets.

I now had to get the stockings off.

Combine a king sized hangover with peeling off scabs and stockings and bits of fused in hair, and then scrubbing out the bits of gravel and sand and then rubbing iodine into the open wounds - it doesn't bear thinking about.

By all means ride around drunk - just don't do it in stockings.

Pricks in BMWs

2011-09-27T21:53:00.001+10:00

What is it about fat, middle aged wog males in convertible BMWs? There I am, signalling my intention to turn right at a roundabout, meaning I've got right of way over oncoming traffic. I see this silver BMW coming towards me quite fast - when I am committed to the turn, I deduce that he's got no intention of stopping. He's seen me, but he's in a car and I'm on a bike, so I guess he thinks that gives him right of way.

If I had been a less experienced cyclist, I would have been a hood ornament. A badly messed up hood ornament - he must have been doing 50km/h. I know that it doesn't matter if you're in the right or not - you'll end up being the one in traction. Just brake, give them the finger and stay alive.

As I gave him the finger, I noticed he was yapping on his mobile phone too. He saw me alright - the arrogant prick just didn't want to stop, and he didn't care if he killed or injured me.

I like BMWs as cars, but I really hate some of their drivers.

Rooted

2011-09-27T21:18:00.003+10:00

I put in a long day of reasonably hard physical labour on the weekend. On Monday morning, I was utterly rooted. I hopped on the bike, and could hardly move. I wasn't particularly stiff or sore - the legs simply had nothing to give. There was nothing in the tank. I had a problem with a clogged fuel filter in the car last year - you'd put your foot to the floor and nothing would happen - the fuel pump simply couldn't deliver more than a trickle of fuel to the engine. That's how it felt.

What pleased me no end was that I did the work with a bloke who was about a decade younger than me. He didn't even show at work on Monday - he was too knackered to leave the house, and he takes the train to the office!

Strange thing is that come Monday afternoon, the legs were on fire. I blasted home in record time. It was as if the morning lethargy had never existed. It was the same again today going to and from work - I've been riding like it might be my last ride ever, not worrying about crawling out of bed tomorrow and climbing into the saddle at oh-dark-hundred.

The body certainly works in mysterious ways.

Now that it's warming up again, I'm striking a terrible problem in the way home - barbeques. I'll be charging up a long, slight hill and I'll get a big whiff of steak and chops wafting over someone's fence. It's a terrible thing to smell when you're hungry and riding hard - the urge to stop, jump the fence and make off with a chop or two is irresistible. I've been getting home feeling utterly ravenous thanks to those barbecuing bastards on my route home.

There's hope for us yet

2011-09-27T20:59:00.001+10:00

From the Silly today:

But it is the loss of faith in the federal government that is most striking. Only 30 per cent of people believe Canberra can be trusted to do the right thing - a sharp drop from a 2009 high of 48 per cent when Kevin Rudd was in power.

Hooray. Most people have finally figured out that leaving things to government does not produce a land of milk and honey populated by unicorns. I've been inside government - I've been a bureaucrat. I know what a completely screwed up place it can be, and how little most public servants care for the public they are supposed to be serving. There are exceptions, but in the main they are lost in a tide of indifference and arrogance.

What I want to know is who that 30% consists of. Can we round them up and deport them to North Korea or Cuba?

Monday photos

2011-09-26T22:53:00.001+10:00

Sunlight over the water, Moses style.

Ninja cyclist (dressed in black from head to foot).

The alternative (yes, we can see you from a mile away).

I don't get it

2011-09-25T17:52:00.000+10:00

According to the Greens, urban consolidation is a good thing and urban sprawl is a bad thing. Higher densities are required in our inner suburbs etc etc.

If that's the case, why are the Greens vigorously protesting against every medium and high density development in our area? Why are they doing their best to make apartment developments uneconomic by imposing stupid zoning restrictions on them, and forcing developers to include "affordable" apartments?

I just don't get it. Is it that they want higher densities, but just not where they happen to live?