Junior, like just about anyone who was ever a teenager, has zits. Not a stack of zits. Just a few zits. Enough though to warrant using some of that face wash stuff that is supposed to clean the goo out of your pores.
We bought a bottle of it a month or two ago. Zits are still there. Clearly, something is not working. It has to be used daily, according to the blurb on the side, to do any good. If my recollections of being a teenager are any guide, the stuff has to be used daily until you're about, oh, 20 years old - give or take a decade.
I hefted the bottle when I was in the shower. It was 99.9% full.
J: "Why are you not scrubbing your pimply mug with the anti-zit juice?" (yelling through bathroom door).
Junior: "It doesn't work."
J: "How many times have you used it?"
Junior: "Once".
I guess that explains things. Teenagers and their rather mangled logic processes. And to think that in a few short years, he'll be able to drive a car. And vote.
Explains how Rudd got in I suppose.
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Roundabouts - love them and hate them
I have a definite love/hate relationship with roundabouts. As a traffic control device, I much prefer them to Stop signs and traffic lights - if the road is clear, there is no need to stop and wait. You just power through them.
The Hate side of the equation comes from the occasional idiot driver that thinks that it is possible to safely fit a car and bike in a one-laned roundabout at the same time. When on the bike, I have to start planning how to tackle a roundabout when I am still a few hundred yards away. You can't just saunter into one like you do in a car - that's a one-way ticket to becoming a hood ornament on a BMW. It takes planning, and occasionally a bit of nerve and cheek.
About 1 in 100 roundabouts is actually bike friendly, like this one below. The nice RTA has put a bike lane through the roundabout on the left (there is no road entering from the left - it is a "three sided" roundabout). When zooming along in this direction, I can sail through the roundabout without having to give way to traffic coming from the right. At least that is the theory. Even with a roundabout as massive as this one, you'd be amazed how many cars enter from the right and spill into the bike lane on the far left. I could drive an oversized bus around this roundabout without touching the bike lane, but there is a "special" class of driver that can't perform that task in a Mini. Nice try by the RTA, but generally a failure in practice due to the fact that total tools are regularly issued with a license. A license to kill... cyclists.
See- here we have the bike lane snaking around the side of the roundabout. And a nice, wide car lane too. There is no excuse for a car to drift left into "my" lane - unless they are a BMW-driving tool. Of which, unfortunately, there are plenty.
I'm going to bang on a bit here about roundabout design. Sorry about that. I was out riding on a delightfully sunny day and halfway through the ride I thought, "Sod it, I'm going to take photographs of lots of roundabouts". I got masses of photos, most of which I will not bore you with. When I started counting them, I was amazed at the number of roundabouts that this particular jaunt takes me through - I got to 9 and gave up.
Here is a small roundabout with a custom designed "bike crunching" island on the right. Note that there is a sort of bike lane on the left (it's actually a bus lane at this spot), but it dramatically comes to an end at this island. The only way to get through this roundabout is to get into the car lane, and the trick is to pick the time at which to do that. Since I am generally going about 10km/h slower than cars at this point, you don't want to dive in too early, as BMW and Mercedes drivers get very, very frustrated if delayed for more than 0.8 seconds, and they are apt to do something incredibly dumb after that amount of time. However, you don't want to leave you run too late, as the driver behind and to your right might just not let you in. Good way to either smash into the concrete island, or become a hood ornament. It's a judgement thing, and it varies from roundabout to roundabout depending on traffic levels, the grade of the road and the "sharpness of the pinchiness".
Here is the next roundabout, with yet another bike crunching island denoted. See how narrow the lane is through here, between these two lumps of concrete? Buses struggle to get through here without leaving lots of rubber on each island.
Yet another roundabout. This one has a nice, wide car lane - but as usual, this tool in a BMW can't even stay in their lane as they exit from the roundabout. Yes, there are no bikes in front of them in the left hand lane (which is a parking bay), but BMW drivers tend to do this sort of thing whether there is no bike in front of them or even when there is one. I reckon they get in their car and suddenly think they are on the Nurburgring. Twats. At least this place has a church on the corner, so I can get speedy last rites if collected by some Germanic pressed metal.
Another stretch of road, with me in the parking bay. Unless there is a game of cricket going on at the oval to the left, there are rarely any cars parked along here, making it a great pseudo bike lane. But see that it ends just up ahead, right before the roundabout, and once again, I have to decide when to pull out and start "dominating" the lane, so I can get into the roundabout without some jerk wanting to overtake me. What I mean by dominating is that instead of riding to the left, I get out into the centre of the lane and hog the road. If I think a driver is tempted to overtake, I'll go even further right to block the bastard out. That doesn't always work, as I had one complete twatter go around the roundabout the wrong way, they were so desperate go overtake. I didn't care - just glad they didn't meet a car coming the other way. Frankly, I was glad they went around the island the other way, because they were well separated from me.
Pinch points - gotta hate these spawn of satan. Again, certain drivers think that if a bike is cruising through one, they can fit their BMW X5 through as well. Not going to happen, me thinks.
See how little room there is between this bongo-van and the kerb? Most BMW drivers think that a bike will safely fit into that gap. This is why I dominate the lane and never, ever let the fuckers overtake, because this is all the room they will leave you.
The Hate side of the equation comes from the occasional idiot driver that thinks that it is possible to safely fit a car and bike in a one-laned roundabout at the same time. When on the bike, I have to start planning how to tackle a roundabout when I am still a few hundred yards away. You can't just saunter into one like you do in a car - that's a one-way ticket to becoming a hood ornament on a BMW. It takes planning, and occasionally a bit of nerve and cheek.
About 1 in 100 roundabouts is actually bike friendly, like this one below. The nice RTA has put a bike lane through the roundabout on the left (there is no road entering from the left - it is a "three sided" roundabout). When zooming along in this direction, I can sail through the roundabout without having to give way to traffic coming from the right. At least that is the theory. Even with a roundabout as massive as this one, you'd be amazed how many cars enter from the right and spill into the bike lane on the far left. I could drive an oversized bus around this roundabout without touching the bike lane, but there is a "special" class of driver that can't perform that task in a Mini. Nice try by the RTA, but generally a failure in practice due to the fact that total tools are regularly issued with a license. A license to kill... cyclists.
See- here we have the bike lane snaking around the side of the roundabout. And a nice, wide car lane too. There is no excuse for a car to drift left into "my" lane - unless they are a BMW-driving tool. Of which, unfortunately, there are plenty.
I'm going to bang on a bit here about roundabout design. Sorry about that. I was out riding on a delightfully sunny day and halfway through the ride I thought, "Sod it, I'm going to take photographs of lots of roundabouts". I got masses of photos, most of which I will not bore you with. When I started counting them, I was amazed at the number of roundabouts that this particular jaunt takes me through - I got to 9 and gave up.
Here is a small roundabout with a custom designed "bike crunching" island on the right. Note that there is a sort of bike lane on the left (it's actually a bus lane at this spot), but it dramatically comes to an end at this island. The only way to get through this roundabout is to get into the car lane, and the trick is to pick the time at which to do that. Since I am generally going about 10km/h slower than cars at this point, you don't want to dive in too early, as BMW and Mercedes drivers get very, very frustrated if delayed for more than 0.8 seconds, and they are apt to do something incredibly dumb after that amount of time. However, you don't want to leave you run too late, as the driver behind and to your right might just not let you in. Good way to either smash into the concrete island, or become a hood ornament. It's a judgement thing, and it varies from roundabout to roundabout depending on traffic levels, the grade of the road and the "sharpness of the pinchiness".
Here is the next roundabout, with yet another bike crunching island denoted. See how narrow the lane is through here, between these two lumps of concrete? Buses struggle to get through here without leaving lots of rubber on each island.
Yet another roundabout. This one has a nice, wide car lane - but as usual, this tool in a BMW can't even stay in their lane as they exit from the roundabout. Yes, there are no bikes in front of them in the left hand lane (which is a parking bay), but BMW drivers tend to do this sort of thing whether there is no bike in front of them or even when there is one. I reckon they get in their car and suddenly think they are on the Nurburgring. Twats. At least this place has a church on the corner, so I can get speedy last rites if collected by some Germanic pressed metal.
Another stretch of road, with me in the parking bay. Unless there is a game of cricket going on at the oval to the left, there are rarely any cars parked along here, making it a great pseudo bike lane. But see that it ends just up ahead, right before the roundabout, and once again, I have to decide when to pull out and start "dominating" the lane, so I can get into the roundabout without some jerk wanting to overtake me. What I mean by dominating is that instead of riding to the left, I get out into the centre of the lane and hog the road. If I think a driver is tempted to overtake, I'll go even further right to block the bastard out. That doesn't always work, as I had one complete twatter go around the roundabout the wrong way, they were so desperate go overtake. I didn't care - just glad they didn't meet a car coming the other way. Frankly, I was glad they went around the island the other way, because they were well separated from me.
Pinch points - gotta hate these spawn of satan. Again, certain drivers think that if a bike is cruising through one, they can fit their BMW X5 through as well. Not going to happen, me thinks.
See how little room there is between this bongo-van and the kerb? Most BMW drivers think that a bike will safely fit into that gap. This is why I dominate the lane and never, ever let the fuckers overtake, because this is all the room they will leave you.
Monday, 15 June 2009
Gorean propaganda buggering up a pleasant ride
Ashfield Council, God rot their souls, have decided to use money extracted from their long-suffering rate payers to erect a series of signs around the Bay Run in homage to Al Gore and the IPCC fairy tale. I counted signs like this one at four different locations - I'm sure those Ashfield twits would have erected more, except that the only control a small portion of the Bay Run. That, by the way, is a terribly badly build and maintained section of the Run. Ashfield spend all their money on crap like this and not enough on fixing pot holes and cleaning drains.
The sign reads:
SEA LEVEL RISING TIDE MARKERS
The nearby marker in the water shows the highest local tide levels for the years 1920, 2006 and the anticipated 2050 level.*
Ashfield Council has installed these markers to show the effect of climate change on local sea levels.
* Source: IPCC Third Assessment Report - "Climate CHnage 2001: The Scientific Basis".
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO REDUCE THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
The photo below shows a marker.
Here is another one by the side of the rowing club.
I wonder why these chose the high tide level in 1920? Could it possibly be that 1920 is the lowest high tide on record, thus making the increase look scarily large?
The sign reads:
SEA LEVEL RISING TIDE MARKERS
The nearby marker in the water shows the highest local tide levels for the years 1920, 2006 and the anticipated 2050 level.*
Ashfield Council has installed these markers to show the effect of climate change on local sea levels.
* Source: IPCC Third Assessment Report - "Climate CHnage 2001: The Scientific Basis".
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO REDUCE THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE
- Hang yourself (I put that one in there)
- Walk, cycle of catch publc transport and leave your car at home
- More depressing crap that I will not bore you with
The photo below shows a marker.
Here is another one by the side of the rowing club.
I wonder why these chose the high tide level in 1920? Could it possibly be that 1920 is the lowest high tide on record, thus making the increase look scarily large?
More monkey photos
I know what the second one is, but the first photo has got me beat. I have no idea what he was photographing this afternoon.
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Spot the church
This is a proper country church, photographed on a recent road trip. From my brief perambulation around the town, I would have to say this was the only brick structure in the area.
When I was out riding yesterday, I spotted this building in Olympic Park. I did a double-take, wondering what on earth an abandoned-looking church was doing in the park.
But I was fooled! This is not a church at all. On closer inspection, the "steeple" displayed all sorts of things that you normally don't find on the side of a church.
"Sub 46" kind of gives it away - substation number 46.
When I was out riding yesterday, I spotted this building in Olympic Park. I did a double-take, wondering what on earth an abandoned-looking church was doing in the park.
But I was fooled! This is not a church at all. On closer inspection, the "steeple" displayed all sorts of things that you normally don't find on the side of a church.
"Sub 46" kind of gives it away - substation number 46.
Hey! Where did all the bikkies go?
I have just whipped up a gaggle of ANZAC biscuits. Due to the limitations of our baking trays, I have to bake them in three batches of 9 each. I need to buy another roll of that non-stick silicon baking stuff which makes biscuit baking so easy.
I put the first batch on the wire rack to finish cooling, walked over to the PC to send an email, and by the time I returned, they were all gone! Stone the crows! Fair suck on the sauce! Someone went the raw prawn and demolished the lot.
Since Junior was looking well content, I asked him if they had taught him to bake these things at school (hoping that he might put his hand up and take over this weekend chore). No dice. He's learned how to make nachos and banana bread, but not ANZAC biscuits.
What is it with schools these days? Are ANZAC biscuits off the menu due to some sort of latent anti-war feeling in the old leather elbow patch wearing lefties? They are the simplest things to make, a fairly hard to screw up, and every one likes to eat them. Why not start them on something like that to get them going?
Unless the sugar and butter content means they are verbotten. Blasted health and safety Nazis.
Batch three is cooking right now. I've got one ear cocked, waiting for the timer to go off. Even Monkey has started eating them, and he is the most suspicious eater you'll ever meet.
Last batch done. I can't even find a proper cake cooling rack in any of the local shops - I've had to pull a shelf out of the oven in order to give them something to cool on, and it's not much chop as if the biscuits are soft, they sag between the rails. How hard is it to find a cake rack? Have we stopped importing them from China?
I put the first batch on the wire rack to finish cooling, walked over to the PC to send an email, and by the time I returned, they were all gone! Stone the crows! Fair suck on the sauce! Someone went the raw prawn and demolished the lot.
Since Junior was looking well content, I asked him if they had taught him to bake these things at school (hoping that he might put his hand up and take over this weekend chore). No dice. He's learned how to make nachos and banana bread, but not ANZAC biscuits.
What is it with schools these days? Are ANZAC biscuits off the menu due to some sort of latent anti-war feeling in the old leather elbow patch wearing lefties? They are the simplest things to make, a fairly hard to screw up, and every one likes to eat them. Why not start them on something like that to get them going?
Unless the sugar and butter content means they are verbotten. Blasted health and safety Nazis.
Batch three is cooking right now. I've got one ear cocked, waiting for the timer to go off. Even Monkey has started eating them, and he is the most suspicious eater you'll ever meet.
Last batch done. I can't even find a proper cake cooling rack in any of the local shops - I've had to pull a shelf out of the oven in order to give them something to cool on, and it's not much chop as if the biscuits are soft, they sag between the rails. How hard is it to find a cake rack? Have we stopped importing them from China?
Urgh. The pitfalls of age
When I go for a ride, I generally try to take it easy for the first few kilometres in order to warm up a bit. It's not easy when it gets cold, because you want to start off riding hard in order to actually "warm up", as in generate some heat internally through rapid muscle contraction. I really have to hold myself back in those first 5 minutes so that I don't damage myself later on. That can be tough when the thermometer is displaying a single digit, and the air is full of mist.
That all flies out the window though when some tool does something dangerous, like the Audi-idiot yesterday who overtook me just as we were entering a roundabout. The horror of that is easy to explain - I do not go "around" roundabouts like a car - I go through them. Because I am not six feet wide like a car, and I don't have 4 wheels, I do not have to turn left and then swing back to the right. I do not perform a wide arc in other words - I can usually just blatt straight through them without turning the handlebars, which means I can blatt through a roundabout much faster than a car can. I end up just skirting the concrete island in the middle, which means I am essentially filling the entire lane in the roundabout. (I'm talking about small roundabouts here that even a small truck would have trouble going around - not those monstrous things the size of a footy oval).
If a car tries to overtake me though, the problem is that we run out of road. Most roundabout lanes are too narrow to carry both a bike and a car side by side in a safe manner. I have been "pushed" into a concrete traffic island on the right before by a car trying to overtake and muscle me out of the lane. It is not fun colliding with a 5 inch tall concrete block at speed. If the car behind is coming up too fast and can't stop in time, there is a huge risk that you'll get collected from behind because idiot thinks he can go around, then realises he can't, and you become a hood ornament.
Personally, if I go through someone's windscreen, and I am still alive and kicking, I am go to beat the driver to a bloody pulp with my remaining strength. They will require surgery to remove their steering wheel from their forehead.
So when I approach a roundabout, I pull out to the right and try and "take over" the entire lane, forcing cars behind me to slow down or stop and let me have the road. I'm not being an arsehole - I'm simply trying to stay alive and stop my skin being smeared all over the road. The occasional driver is in such a hurry and feels so little need to share the road that they cross over to the wrong side of the road and go around me - I had one driver go around the roundabout the wrong way in order to get in front of me! Madness.
The stupidity of this is that in many cases, I soon catch up with the driver, who is stranded at the next set of lights. In most cases, I leave them be as it is not safe to wind through the stalled cars to bang on their window and give them my opinion on their parentage, driving skills and personality traits. The odd unlucky driver has recieved an earfull from me, and I am sometimes tempted to carry a set of side cutters in my back pocket - if the driver is unrepentant, you simply lean down and cut the top off their tyre valves with the side cutters, and then ride away, leaving them wondering how they are going to change two flat tyres.
All that aside, this is why I try to be a Zen cyclist. Don't let it get to you. There is no need to join a pistol club and acquire a small fire arm. Walk past that sports store and ignore the desire to buy a small baseball bat. Put the monkey wrench away - you are not taking that for a ride today. And put the side cutters back in the tool box.
Anyway, I met the Audi within a few minutes of leaving home yesterday, and even though I was not warmed up, I chased the bastard. Boy, do I regret that now. Everything hurts. When I was far from home yesterday, I could feel it in my back muscles and leg muscles and even in my shoulders - I gave it a solid spurt before I was ready to spurt, and the body becomes so much less forgiving as it starts to fall apart. I even had back spasms as I was waiting at a red light - that has not happened in years.
So if I go again today, I will think Zen. And work out a way to take out these bastards at long range.
That all flies out the window though when some tool does something dangerous, like the Audi-idiot yesterday who overtook me just as we were entering a roundabout. The horror of that is easy to explain - I do not go "around" roundabouts like a car - I go through them. Because I am not six feet wide like a car, and I don't have 4 wheels, I do not have to turn left and then swing back to the right. I do not perform a wide arc in other words - I can usually just blatt straight through them without turning the handlebars, which means I can blatt through a roundabout much faster than a car can. I end up just skirting the concrete island in the middle, which means I am essentially filling the entire lane in the roundabout. (I'm talking about small roundabouts here that even a small truck would have trouble going around - not those monstrous things the size of a footy oval).
If a car tries to overtake me though, the problem is that we run out of road. Most roundabout lanes are too narrow to carry both a bike and a car side by side in a safe manner. I have been "pushed" into a concrete traffic island on the right before by a car trying to overtake and muscle me out of the lane. It is not fun colliding with a 5 inch tall concrete block at speed. If the car behind is coming up too fast and can't stop in time, there is a huge risk that you'll get collected from behind because idiot thinks he can go around, then realises he can't, and you become a hood ornament.
Personally, if I go through someone's windscreen, and I am still alive and kicking, I am go to beat the driver to a bloody pulp with my remaining strength. They will require surgery to remove their steering wheel from their forehead.
So when I approach a roundabout, I pull out to the right and try and "take over" the entire lane, forcing cars behind me to slow down or stop and let me have the road. I'm not being an arsehole - I'm simply trying to stay alive and stop my skin being smeared all over the road. The occasional driver is in such a hurry and feels so little need to share the road that they cross over to the wrong side of the road and go around me - I had one driver go around the roundabout the wrong way in order to get in front of me! Madness.
The stupidity of this is that in many cases, I soon catch up with the driver, who is stranded at the next set of lights. In most cases, I leave them be as it is not safe to wind through the stalled cars to bang on their window and give them my opinion on their parentage, driving skills and personality traits. The odd unlucky driver has recieved an earfull from me, and I am sometimes tempted to carry a set of side cutters in my back pocket - if the driver is unrepentant, you simply lean down and cut the top off their tyre valves with the side cutters, and then ride away, leaving them wondering how they are going to change two flat tyres.
All that aside, this is why I try to be a Zen cyclist. Don't let it get to you. There is no need to join a pistol club and acquire a small fire arm. Walk past that sports store and ignore the desire to buy a small baseball bat. Put the monkey wrench away - you are not taking that for a ride today. And put the side cutters back in the tool box.
Anyway, I met the Audi within a few minutes of leaving home yesterday, and even though I was not warmed up, I chased the bastard. Boy, do I regret that now. Everything hurts. When I was far from home yesterday, I could feel it in my back muscles and leg muscles and even in my shoulders - I gave it a solid spurt before I was ready to spurt, and the body becomes so much less forgiving as it starts to fall apart. I even had back spasms as I was waiting at a red light - that has not happened in years.
So if I go again today, I will think Zen. And work out a way to take out these bastards at long range.
Saturday, 13 June 2009
Putting a dent in your head
One thing I forgot about my most recent post - the guys doing the helmet testing told me to tighten my head strap (the one that goes around your temple to the back of your head) - which I did. When I got home, I had a dent in my forehead from where the uncomfortable bloody strap had been jammed into my skin.
That strap is now back on the old setting. Yes, the helmet slid slightly when backwards pressure was placed on it, but if it's too bloody uncomfortable, I won't want to wear it.
The other thing they told me is that from the anecdotal evidence they have collected on bike/car crashes, roundabouts are about the worst place to be on a pushbike. You either get hit from behind by an impatient driver that wants to overtake you in a one lane roundabout (almost happened to me today, thanks to a dickhead in an Audi, who I caught at the next lights), or you get hit from side on by someone that fails to see you - or decides to not give way because you are small and vulnerable, so you slam into the side of their car.
Make that van, or ute. The most common vehicle that fails to give way to me is the tradesman's ute (or van). The most common type of vehicle that tries to overtake me in a roundabout is the black BMW - replaced today by the black Audi. Seriously, given all the wankers driving BMW's these days, can someone tell me why we didn't nuke the Germans as well, just for the heck of it?
That strap is now back on the old setting. Yes, the helmet slid slightly when backwards pressure was placed on it, but if it's too bloody uncomfortable, I won't want to wear it.
The other thing they told me is that from the anecdotal evidence they have collected on bike/car crashes, roundabouts are about the worst place to be on a pushbike. You either get hit from behind by an impatient driver that wants to overtake you in a one lane roundabout (almost happened to me today, thanks to a dickhead in an Audi, who I caught at the next lights), or you get hit from side on by someone that fails to see you - or decides to not give way because you are small and vulnerable, so you slam into the side of their car.
Make that van, or ute. The most common vehicle that fails to give way to me is the tradesman's ute (or van). The most common type of vehicle that tries to overtake me in a roundabout is the black BMW - replaced today by the black Audi. Seriously, given all the wankers driving BMW's these days, can someone tell me why we didn't nuke the Germans as well, just for the heck of it?
Ugh. Riding when out of shape is no fun
6 months of sitting in the car have clearly taken their toll. Whilst riding through Olympic Park today, I spied a rather scientific looking collection of gadgetry up a side path, and some Dilberts standing around with clipboards talking to cyclists. I didn't get what it was all about, so on the way back, I stopped for a look.
The Dilberts turned out to be from the Uni of NSW, and they were evaluating bike helmets and percieved risk and speed. I think. They asked me a few questions about my helmet, then measured my weight (eek!) and height before getting out a large set of calipers and measuring my head from various angles. They might have been secret Phrenologists for all I know. They then studied my helmet, evaluating how it was constructed and its size and so on.
Then came the interesting bit. They put a strap through the helmet and asked me to put it on. They then attached a set of handheld scales to the strap and pulled on it from various directions. I think what they were measuring was how much force it took before the helmet started sliding off my head - forwards, backwards and sideways. I was advised to tighten the temple strap a bit - which I did - but otherwise they thought I had it done up nice and tight. When you get flung off a bike (as has happened to me), the last thing you want is the helmet shifting under the G-force and exposing part of your noggin to the road surface/car bonnet/tree etc.
I've seen plenty of people riding around with their straps so loose, it's obvious that the helmet will simply flick clean off their head if they are ever walloped by something. What is the point of wearing a helmet if you aren't going to do it up properly, so that it flings off just when you really, really need it?
People are boneheads. I don't need to prove that to you.
For my troubles, they gave me a $15 voucher. Oh, and they told me that I now weigh over the dreaded ton. Eeek, as I said before. Time to do lots and lots and lots of km.
Before I finished up, they got me to ride up and down a stretch of path where they had some speed measuring devices setup, and asked me to estimate my speed. I thought I was doing 25km/h, but they told me I was doing 27 point something. I think they were collecting data for using in analysis of bike crashes - to get some idea of how cyclists percieve speed.
They are also doing a study of helmets that have been through a crash, to see how the helmet performed on impact. Unfortunately, I threw my crashed helmet out a year ago, so I couldn't help them out.
Their marketing skills sucked, I have to say. They had one badly lettered sign up on the bike path, which I completely failed to see, and the only reason I stopped was because there were other cyclists there before me. When I was there getting my head read, a few more turned up to see what it was all about. The only reason they got any customers is that Olympic Park on a weekend seems to have a large number of altruistic, older cyclists zooming around - the sort of people who will pop in and help out if they see someone who needs it.
Apart from that, I felt like a chick when I went riding today. I spent some time outside observing the weather and thinking, "What shall I wear?" If I had gone at say 8am, the answer would have been simple - every item of cycling clothing that I own. But by 12.30pm, it had warmed up to a lovely 21 degrees, although the sky was full of threatening clouds.
I ended up going with my summer rig, with the addition of an undershirt and nothing more. Within a few kilometres, I was regretting the undershirt, thinking that I was going to start sweating like Henry Rollins at a particularly tough gig. But then the clouds rolled in, and the temp immediately dropped 3 degrees (it's handy having a temperature guage in your bike computer). That was enough for my thighs to get chilled, and I decided to keep the ride short instead of motoring miles out into the western suburbs. I discovered that I have been riding through Harris Park on some of those rides - the scene of Indian-on-Leb bashings recently. I usually go through Harris Park early in the morning, and have noted the large number of Indians playing cricket on the sports grounds. I have never seen a Leb out that way though - I guess they don't get out of bed before noon.
Speaking of which, I was served today by a woggy looking bloke, and he had clearly plucked his eyebrows. What do you think of that?
The Dilberts turned out to be from the Uni of NSW, and they were evaluating bike helmets and percieved risk and speed. I think. They asked me a few questions about my helmet, then measured my weight (eek!) and height before getting out a large set of calipers and measuring my head from various angles. They might have been secret Phrenologists for all I know. They then studied my helmet, evaluating how it was constructed and its size and so on.
Then came the interesting bit. They put a strap through the helmet and asked me to put it on. They then attached a set of handheld scales to the strap and pulled on it from various directions. I think what they were measuring was how much force it took before the helmet started sliding off my head - forwards, backwards and sideways. I was advised to tighten the temple strap a bit - which I did - but otherwise they thought I had it done up nice and tight. When you get flung off a bike (as has happened to me), the last thing you want is the helmet shifting under the G-force and exposing part of your noggin to the road surface/car bonnet/tree etc.
I've seen plenty of people riding around with their straps so loose, it's obvious that the helmet will simply flick clean off their head if they are ever walloped by something. What is the point of wearing a helmet if you aren't going to do it up properly, so that it flings off just when you really, really need it?
People are boneheads. I don't need to prove that to you.
For my troubles, they gave me a $15 voucher. Oh, and they told me that I now weigh over the dreaded ton. Eeek, as I said before. Time to do lots and lots and lots of km.
Before I finished up, they got me to ride up and down a stretch of path where they had some speed measuring devices setup, and asked me to estimate my speed. I thought I was doing 25km/h, but they told me I was doing 27 point something. I think they were collecting data for using in analysis of bike crashes - to get some idea of how cyclists percieve speed.
They are also doing a study of helmets that have been through a crash, to see how the helmet performed on impact. Unfortunately, I threw my crashed helmet out a year ago, so I couldn't help them out.
Their marketing skills sucked, I have to say. They had one badly lettered sign up on the bike path, which I completely failed to see, and the only reason I stopped was because there were other cyclists there before me. When I was there getting my head read, a few more turned up to see what it was all about. The only reason they got any customers is that Olympic Park on a weekend seems to have a large number of altruistic, older cyclists zooming around - the sort of people who will pop in and help out if they see someone who needs it.
Apart from that, I felt like a chick when I went riding today. I spent some time outside observing the weather and thinking, "What shall I wear?" If I had gone at say 8am, the answer would have been simple - every item of cycling clothing that I own. But by 12.30pm, it had warmed up to a lovely 21 degrees, although the sky was full of threatening clouds.
I ended up going with my summer rig, with the addition of an undershirt and nothing more. Within a few kilometres, I was regretting the undershirt, thinking that I was going to start sweating like Henry Rollins at a particularly tough gig. But then the clouds rolled in, and the temp immediately dropped 3 degrees (it's handy having a temperature guage in your bike computer). That was enough for my thighs to get chilled, and I decided to keep the ride short instead of motoring miles out into the western suburbs. I discovered that I have been riding through Harris Park on some of those rides - the scene of Indian-on-Leb bashings recently. I usually go through Harris Park early in the morning, and have noted the large number of Indians playing cricket on the sports grounds. I have never seen a Leb out that way though - I guess they don't get out of bed before noon.
Speaking of which, I was served today by a woggy looking bloke, and he had clearly plucked his eyebrows. What do you think of that?
Cyclists who ride like Mr Toad
This article in The Spectator cracked me up:
She describes nearly cleaning up a cyclist who came zipping out of a side street, not looking where he was going and yapping on a mobile phone with his head down. Sheer stupidity. I have no sympathy for these fools when they take a tumble - idiots like that have nearly cleaned me up on a few occasions when I have been twirling the pedals. They're a bloody menace to one and all.
Given that I hope to start riding to work again regularly next week, I have to be careful to restrain myself from turning into one of them. It's so easy to go with the flow and behave like an arsehole when others around you are acting that way. Must resist.... must resist. Remain a decent human being...... do not get absorbed by the Bastard Bike Borg......
Top-gear city cyclists are a law unto themselves. They’re a hardcore bunch — the very antithesis of a benevolent Boris or those daffy Mrs Tiggy-Winkle handwoven folk who choose to cycle only when the sun is shining and they’ve bought something pretty to put in their baskets. City types are not bumbling about on their bikes merely for fun. They’re going hell for leather and, like most people on the road, possess a deeply competitive streak. Obviously they have every right to cycle to work, just as we motorists (still) have the right to drive, yet road-sharing on this particular stretch is rife with danger. I know many of we car-owners are guilty of driving with the poop-poop arrogance of a Mr Toad, but two-wheeled tyrants can be every bit as bad. I’ve witnessed some of these louche Lords of the Lycra behaving like schizophrenic eco-warriors. One minute they’re compliant, staying faithful to the Highway Code; the next they’re acting as though they have the personal protection of an armour-plated Hummer. They are inconsistent, which is worryingly confusing.She's quite right. Some people get on a bike and think that sitting in the saddle is an excuse to go mental. Things that they would never dream of doing in a car become quite normal behaviour when on two wheels.
She describes nearly cleaning up a cyclist who came zipping out of a side street, not looking where he was going and yapping on a mobile phone with his head down. Sheer stupidity. I have no sympathy for these fools when they take a tumble - idiots like that have nearly cleaned me up on a few occasions when I have been twirling the pedals. They're a bloody menace to one and all.
Given that I hope to start riding to work again regularly next week, I have to be careful to restrain myself from turning into one of them. It's so easy to go with the flow and behave like an arsehole when others around you are acting that way. Must resist.... must resist. Remain a decent human being...... do not get absorbed by the Bastard Bike Borg......
Friday, 12 June 2009
The small annoyances of starting a new job
I'm not really starting a new job - it's just a change of surroundings. After spending the last few years working at client sites, using the client's computers and phones and desks and things, I have now moved into the office of the company that I am actually supposed to be working for. It's an odd feeling, given that I have worked for them for a few years, but have never spent a day in the office.
I spent most of today in the office sorting out the basics.
To start with, I had to find a place to sit. Not as in a cubicle, as there are no cubicles, but as in a chair on which to place my bottom. I have been allocated a few feet of space at a long bench where half a dozen of us sit side by side, and there were six spots this morning and five chairs. Since the office is very much NOT a 9-5 establishment, when I got there, only about 20% of the staff had arrived for work. It was simply a matter of wandering the floor to pinch what appeared to be a spare chair. I hope I got that right. In the time I was there, no one came in and screamed about their missing chair.
Here's a funny thing. I have spent over 15 years working in organisations that place great store on who gets what sort of office etc etc. I watched enormous amounts of energy and political capital being expended on gaining another square foot of office space for this manager or that executive. I never really gave a toss - so long as I was paid, I was happy to work sitting on a milk crate in a store room.
These days, I am making more per hour than every manager I have ever worked for - in some cases, a lot more - and I find myself working at a few square feet of cheap melamine, with no view, no pot plants, no art work, no secretary, no naugahide lounge chairs, no bookshelves, no parking space; sitting cheek by jowl with others in the same boat. And I don't mind at all. I don't believe offices should be made to be too comfortable - when they get that way, the people inside them never leave. They never go out in the field and visit their underlings, or their customers; and they tarry at the office over trivial matters instead of going home to the wife and kids. Offices should be spartan and just pleasant enough to keep the health inspectors away - that way, people come in, tear through their work and then bugger off to somewhere nicer. When people prefer their office to the beach, it is time to rip out the comforts.
Wives - if your husbands are not coming home early enough, tell their boss that you want your husband evicted from his office and stuck in the pokiest, nastiest, smelliest, coldest cubicle that they have. (I say "wives" because I have had beers with many men over the years that admitted to delaying their departure from the office to avoid bathing and feeding the kids and putting them to bed).
Then there was the phone. We have VOIP phones, and mine was not working. It was sitting there with a little clock-like thing going around and around on its digital face, and that is not good. A phone should not have a little clock going around and around. I had to call IT to come up to have a look at that one. Turns out the bloke that installed the phone connected it to the wrong socket. But without a working phone, I had no network connection for my new laptop.
"New" laptop is a better description. The bloke next to me laughed when I pulled it out of its rather battered looking carry bag. He said, "When I started here 5 years ago, I was given the next model up from that one. I am on my third laptop, and my first one was a later model than what you've got. They've really dug around in the parts bin to find you a machine".
As I collected the laptop, I asked the help desk bloke to reset my network password. I had tried to logon remotely last night to read my email, and couldn't get in.
"Oh yeah", he said, "The bloke who built the laptop for you reset your password. It's on the sticky note on the side of the case".
I could have throttled him. I tried a dozen times to logon from home, and thought that I had stuffed up my password. Gee, thanks for telling me, guys.
The office has wireless, so I tried connecting to that.
No dice. It turns out that IT had not configured the authentication settings properly.
So I sat at a nearby vacant desk and plugged in there. The laptop came with the bare bones in terms of the software that I need, so I then tried to install the stuff I needed.
No dice their either. Turns out the system was pushing dozens of patches onto my laptop in the background as I sat there, and it wouldn't load the stuff I needed whilst that was happening. It took nearly an hour for Outlook to start up and get to the point where I could read an email.
So I thought I would browse the intranet, and see what company news I had been missing.
No dice. You need approval to do that, and although my access had been approved, it had not been actioned. I could get to the internet and read the newspaper, but not read the intranet. Weird. Nor could I access a single network folder that I needed to get into.
At least I managed to fill out a timesheet and print it.
By the end of the day, the help desk was well and truly sick of me.
I gave up and went home early. I had spent 6 hours getting to the point where I have a chair, a "laptop", a phone that works, access to email and bugger all else. Talk about a day flushed down the toilet.
The only good news is that I found a Japanese restaurant nearby that looks half descent. I couldn't do anything for an hour whilst the help desk fiddled with something, so I went for a walk around the area. A nearby cafe also makes very good coffee. All in all, next week can only get better.
I spent most of today in the office sorting out the basics.
To start with, I had to find a place to sit. Not as in a cubicle, as there are no cubicles, but as in a chair on which to place my bottom. I have been allocated a few feet of space at a long bench where half a dozen of us sit side by side, and there were six spots this morning and five chairs. Since the office is very much NOT a 9-5 establishment, when I got there, only about 20% of the staff had arrived for work. It was simply a matter of wandering the floor to pinch what appeared to be a spare chair. I hope I got that right. In the time I was there, no one came in and screamed about their missing chair.
Here's a funny thing. I have spent over 15 years working in organisations that place great store on who gets what sort of office etc etc. I watched enormous amounts of energy and political capital being expended on gaining another square foot of office space for this manager or that executive. I never really gave a toss - so long as I was paid, I was happy to work sitting on a milk crate in a store room.
These days, I am making more per hour than every manager I have ever worked for - in some cases, a lot more - and I find myself working at a few square feet of cheap melamine, with no view, no pot plants, no art work, no secretary, no naugahide lounge chairs, no bookshelves, no parking space; sitting cheek by jowl with others in the same boat. And I don't mind at all. I don't believe offices should be made to be too comfortable - when they get that way, the people inside them never leave. They never go out in the field and visit their underlings, or their customers; and they tarry at the office over trivial matters instead of going home to the wife and kids. Offices should be spartan and just pleasant enough to keep the health inspectors away - that way, people come in, tear through their work and then bugger off to somewhere nicer. When people prefer their office to the beach, it is time to rip out the comforts.
Wives - if your husbands are not coming home early enough, tell their boss that you want your husband evicted from his office and stuck in the pokiest, nastiest, smelliest, coldest cubicle that they have. (I say "wives" because I have had beers with many men over the years that admitted to delaying their departure from the office to avoid bathing and feeding the kids and putting them to bed).
Then there was the phone. We have VOIP phones, and mine was not working. It was sitting there with a little clock-like thing going around and around on its digital face, and that is not good. A phone should not have a little clock going around and around. I had to call IT to come up to have a look at that one. Turns out the bloke that installed the phone connected it to the wrong socket. But without a working phone, I had no network connection for my new laptop.
"New" laptop is a better description. The bloke next to me laughed when I pulled it out of its rather battered looking carry bag. He said, "When I started here 5 years ago, I was given the next model up from that one. I am on my third laptop, and my first one was a later model than what you've got. They've really dug around in the parts bin to find you a machine".
As I collected the laptop, I asked the help desk bloke to reset my network password. I had tried to logon remotely last night to read my email, and couldn't get in.
"Oh yeah", he said, "The bloke who built the laptop for you reset your password. It's on the sticky note on the side of the case".
I could have throttled him. I tried a dozen times to logon from home, and thought that I had stuffed up my password. Gee, thanks for telling me, guys.
The office has wireless, so I tried connecting to that.
No dice. It turns out that IT had not configured the authentication settings properly.
So I sat at a nearby vacant desk and plugged in there. The laptop came with the bare bones in terms of the software that I need, so I then tried to install the stuff I needed.
No dice their either. Turns out the system was pushing dozens of patches onto my laptop in the background as I sat there, and it wouldn't load the stuff I needed whilst that was happening. It took nearly an hour for Outlook to start up and get to the point where I could read an email.
So I thought I would browse the intranet, and see what company news I had been missing.
No dice. You need approval to do that, and although my access had been approved, it had not been actioned. I could get to the internet and read the newspaper, but not read the intranet. Weird. Nor could I access a single network folder that I needed to get into.
At least I managed to fill out a timesheet and print it.
By the end of the day, the help desk was well and truly sick of me.
I gave up and went home early. I had spent 6 hours getting to the point where I have a chair, a "laptop", a phone that works, access to email and bugger all else. Talk about a day flushed down the toilet.
The only good news is that I found a Japanese restaurant nearby that looks half descent. I couldn't do anything for an hour whilst the help desk fiddled with something, so I went for a walk around the area. A nearby cafe also makes very good coffee. All in all, next week can only get better.
Thursday, 11 June 2009
I am turning into my parents
Ever eat fennel as a kid? Not me. I was a peas-only, brussel sprouting-detesting kind of kid. I don't mind brussel sprouts these days, although it took a spell of commercial vegie picking to convert me. The only way to eat them is to arise at sparrow fart, when a heavy frost lies upon the ground, and to pick the baby sprouts as the sun peeks above the horizon and provides enough light to work by. When the stems are icy cold, the sprouts snap off cleanly and stay fresh and crispy. It's hell on the hands, but sprouts require that level of dedication to perform for your taste buds.
Take those fresh, crisp, cold sprouts and boil or steam them lightly - just enough to remove most of the crunch - and then douse them with salt and butter. Eat. If they make you feel that way, fart. Enjoy. The eating that is.
The things that we regularly get in the shops are a parody of a proper sprout - they remind me of mini-cabbages and have the flavour of old, wet socks. No wonder kids refuse to eat them. I refuse to eat them most of the time.
Fennel was another one of those things that I turned my nose up as a kid, possibly because mum insisted on boiling it to death and serving it like a limp face cloth. It's taken me 25 years to get over that.
Tonight, I made a fennel gratin. It was dead easy.
To start with, I chopped the fennel up so that it would fit nicely into a gratin dish - I chopped it roughly into 8 or 10 pieces. It turns out that I used the lid of a gratin dish, but that made no difference. After buttering the lid and laying out the fennel and making the cheese sauce, I had a glance at the recipe and found that you are supposed to simmer the fennel for 10 minutes or so first, and then drain well.
Oops. Good thing the sauce was still in the pot, and not all over the fennel.
So I boiled it, drained it, drained it some more and laid it out again. Funny how it didn't lay itself out perfectly the 2nd time around. On went the sauce - a basic white sauce with whatever cheese I could find in the fridge (which did not include Gruyere, which is what it really needed) and some nutmeg. Not enough nutmeg. Or nutmeg that was no longer fresh.
Over the top of that went some breadcrumbs. More grated cheese should have been sprinkled on with the breadcrumbs, but I had run out of cheese. Into the oven it went, half-cheesed.
Out it came half an hour later, crispy and crunchy on top and smelling delightfully of aniseed. And not of nutmeg. The nutmeg must have had it.
The kids thought it looked and smelled disgusting. That's their bad luck. It all went - not even any leftovers for lunch tomorrow. The kids gave me the same look I used to give my parents - how can you eat that stuff?
I will have to make them meatloaf next.
Take those fresh, crisp, cold sprouts and boil or steam them lightly - just enough to remove most of the crunch - and then douse them with salt and butter. Eat. If they make you feel that way, fart. Enjoy. The eating that is.
The things that we regularly get in the shops are a parody of a proper sprout - they remind me of mini-cabbages and have the flavour of old, wet socks. No wonder kids refuse to eat them. I refuse to eat them most of the time.
Fennel was another one of those things that I turned my nose up as a kid, possibly because mum insisted on boiling it to death and serving it like a limp face cloth. It's taken me 25 years to get over that.
Tonight, I made a fennel gratin. It was dead easy.
To start with, I chopped the fennel up so that it would fit nicely into a gratin dish - I chopped it roughly into 8 or 10 pieces. It turns out that I used the lid of a gratin dish, but that made no difference. After buttering the lid and laying out the fennel and making the cheese sauce, I had a glance at the recipe and found that you are supposed to simmer the fennel for 10 minutes or so first, and then drain well.
Oops. Good thing the sauce was still in the pot, and not all over the fennel.
So I boiled it, drained it, drained it some more and laid it out again. Funny how it didn't lay itself out perfectly the 2nd time around. On went the sauce - a basic white sauce with whatever cheese I could find in the fridge (which did not include Gruyere, which is what it really needed) and some nutmeg. Not enough nutmeg. Or nutmeg that was no longer fresh.
Over the top of that went some breadcrumbs. More grated cheese should have been sprinkled on with the breadcrumbs, but I had run out of cheese. Into the oven it went, half-cheesed.
Out it came half an hour later, crispy and crunchy on top and smelling delightfully of aniseed. And not of nutmeg. The nutmeg must have had it.
The kids thought it looked and smelled disgusting. That's their bad luck. It all went - not even any leftovers for lunch tomorrow. The kids gave me the same look I used to give my parents - how can you eat that stuff?
I will have to make them meatloaf next.
WTF?
There I am, sitting at a red light. I look to my left, and the lady in the car next to me is flossing her teeth.
WTF!!??
Hippies and greed
If you've ever perused my blogroll, you may have noticed that I follow the Dr Housing Bubble Blog, which I think is a great read in regard to the distastrous US housing market meltdown, and all that followed in its wake.
Don't you just love the concept that the people, nay, the speculators that dove into the housing market with wild abandon, solely in an effort to garner buckets of filthy lucre and become richer than Croseus - were hippies in their youth?
Who generally has enough money and a long enough financial track record to borrow lots of money for speculation? (which used to be called "investment" whilst people were making money, but quickly became "speculation" when the market tanked). People in their late 40's or early 50's - that's who.
In other words, people that came of age in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The Age of Aquarius and all that.
Remember John Lennon singing something about "imagine there's no money"? Personally, Lennon makes me want to puke, but a big chunk of a generation grew up thinking that property was theft and showering more than once a week was a "downer".
The most of those meat heads grew up, got jobs and en masse created the biggest speculative bubble in history.
Oh, the irony.
Those bloody hippies were always a smug, self satisfied bunch of wankers; in it only for themselves. I hope they get to spend their retirement in a homeless shelter. As they used to say in around 1973 - "bad karma, man".
Don't you just love the concept that the people, nay, the speculators that dove into the housing market with wild abandon, solely in an effort to garner buckets of filthy lucre and become richer than Croseus - were hippies in their youth?
Who generally has enough money and a long enough financial track record to borrow lots of money for speculation? (which used to be called "investment" whilst people were making money, but quickly became "speculation" when the market tanked). People in their late 40's or early 50's - that's who.
In other words, people that came of age in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The Age of Aquarius and all that.
Remember John Lennon singing something about "imagine there's no money"? Personally, Lennon makes me want to puke, but a big chunk of a generation grew up thinking that property was theft and showering more than once a week was a "downer".
The most of those meat heads grew up, got jobs and en masse created the biggest speculative bubble in history.
Oh, the irony.
Those bloody hippies were always a smug, self satisfied bunch of wankers; in it only for themselves. I hope they get to spend their retirement in a homeless shelter. As they used to say in around 1973 - "bad karma, man".
Wednesday, 10 June 2009
Are you a manic knife sharpener?
I am pretty keen on keeping my kitchen knives sharp. This is something I inherited from dad, who spent decades searching for the best way to put an edge on a blade. Luckily for me, he found a good solution years ago, and passed it on. I use a sharpener apparently favoured by professional fisherman, who like a sharp blade for filleting mounds of fish.
Until today, I had always thought it a good idea to keep all the knives nice and sharp. Apparently not:
Not that I am in the habit of keeping a knife around me for sticking into someone else. But I will keep this in mind, next time I am honing a knife with the intention of dismembering a tomato for a sandwich.
Until today, I had always thought it a good idea to keep all the knives nice and sharp. Apparently not:
Now you may be thinking this will dull the knife and make it less effective in a last ditch combat situation. This is not so. The fixed blade knife is not intended to be razor sharp. The damage is caused by the sheer size and weight of the knife. Do you remember the instructions that came with the bayonet? They said the attached sharpening stone was to remove burs only, and not to sharpen the knife.
The most important reason not to sharpen your combat fixed blade is that heavy, sharp knives tend to cut into bone when used for thrusting, and therefore “stick to ribs”. A slightly less sharp knife will deflect off of bones and into soft tissue where it will do the most damage. Your knife does you no good if it’s stuck in the guy on the ground.
Not that I am in the habit of keeping a knife around me for sticking into someone else. But I will keep this in mind, next time I am honing a knife with the intention of dismembering a tomato for a sandwich.
A cyclist not to be messed with
This is one way to keep arrogant boofhead wankers who think they own the road under control.
I'd be carrying more than 30 rounds though. I'd get through that just getting to work. Need another 30 for the trip home.
I'd be carrying more than 30 rounds though. I'd get through that just getting to work. Need another 30 for the trip home.
Farty pants
Further to my "country cousins" post, I don't think I managed to adequately convey what the farty pants looked like.
Imagine puffy pleated pirate pantaloons.
Now imagine rapidly filling them with gas.
Now imagine them deflating.
Farty pants.
Imagine puffy pleated pirate pantaloons.
Now imagine rapidly filling them with gas.
Now imagine them deflating.
Farty pants.
Does punishment work?
I have heard many an argument that "punishment does not work".
Hmm.
Consider the activities of quite a few British MPs at present, diddling and fiddling their expenses. Although many have not undertaken outright fraud, the smell of something rotten hangs over the heads of all who have pushed the edge of the envelope in regards to claiming from the taxpayer.
What is the result?
Cabinet ministers have resigned under pressure, giving up oodles of perks and a big chunk of salary. A swag of MPs have said that they will not stand at the next election after being pressured by their local constituents. They are losing not only a source of income, but the chance to be part of a powerful elite. Others have paid tens of thousands of pounds in capital gains taxes that they may not be legally obliged to pay, but they have paid in order to atone for their sins.
That sounds like punishment to me.
Serious punishment. They're not being sent to prison (well, it might be too early to say that in some cases), but the mighty have fallen enormously. Power, prestige and pay have all been anihalated.
The effect on British politics has been electric. The punishment of the most odious sinners has provided a salutory lesson to the rest - I dare say that we won't see anyone trying to fiddle their expenses for a decade or so, until the lesson needs to be learned again.
In other words, the punishment of some will improve the behaviour of most of the remainder, as well as improving the behaviour of some of those being punished.
Sounds like punishment works just fine to me.
Hmm.
Consider the activities of quite a few British MPs at present, diddling and fiddling their expenses. Although many have not undertaken outright fraud, the smell of something rotten hangs over the heads of all who have pushed the edge of the envelope in regards to claiming from the taxpayer.
What is the result?
Cabinet ministers have resigned under pressure, giving up oodles of perks and a big chunk of salary. A swag of MPs have said that they will not stand at the next election after being pressured by their local constituents. They are losing not only a source of income, but the chance to be part of a powerful elite. Others have paid tens of thousands of pounds in capital gains taxes that they may not be legally obliged to pay, but they have paid in order to atone for their sins.
That sounds like punishment to me.
Serious punishment. They're not being sent to prison (well, it might be too early to say that in some cases), but the mighty have fallen enormously. Power, prestige and pay have all been anihalated.
The effect on British politics has been electric. The punishment of the most odious sinners has provided a salutory lesson to the rest - I dare say that we won't see anyone trying to fiddle their expenses for a decade or so, until the lesson needs to be learned again.
In other words, the punishment of some will improve the behaviour of most of the remainder, as well as improving the behaviour of some of those being punished.
Sounds like punishment works just fine to me.
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Junee licorice factory, fooling about with camera settings
After all that, the Green Grove factory is a great place to stop for a tour, a feed and a coffee. I ignore the guff about them being organic and simply enjoy the best coffee for a hundred miles in any direction; good reasonably priced food and an always interesting and entertaining tour of the factory. Yes, they make licorice here, as well as lots of other chocolate coated goodies. The first time we visited, I think we spent $100 on chocolate and licorice, and a few hundred more on some art work. I love to watch stuff being made. I could sit in a car factory all day and watch cars being put together, or a steel mill and watch steel being poured. A licorice factory is much more fun - if you like licorice. I am no fan of it, but I get a kick out of watching people pouring raw ingredients into machinery at one end of a room and seeing a guillotine slicing up little licorice sticks for packing at the other end.
The secret is obviously out. The place was completely packed on the weekend. The carpark was overflowing, tables were being fought over and they'd run out of half the food on the menu by the time we ordered. Who cares - it's great.
Country cousins
Notes made after a night at the pub with the in-laws:
- Met dero couple. Between the two of them, they didn't have a full set of teeth. Most upper front teeth on both missing - could have a tonguey without opening their mouths. Age - 37. Looked 60+. Woman half my height, twice my weight. Bloke skinny as a rake. Wore cowboy hat indoors at all times.
- Met lesbian. Last bloke she bonked was my brother-in-law.
- Heard about school affairs. Lesbian took up with English teacher whilst 15 or so. Another girl took up with the History teacher. Not seen as out of the ordinary.
- Wife beating - considered nothing much, so long as woman throws the first punch
- Read local paper that morning. Cops nabbed a bloke who did a runner and smashed up his new Commodore. Turns out he had pulled an armed robbery on the local RSL and made off with twenty grand. Part of that was spent on the Commodore. Brother-in-law fixed the brakes two days before prang. Thanked the Lord he was paid in cash before cops got the robber.
- Robbers pay better than hospitals. Much complaining about town idiot who was doing something important for the local state health service. Took them two years to pay brother-in-law for servicing the health service cars. Dairy no longer supplying milk to hospital due to unpaid bills.
- Height of fashion - being seen in jeans with a pair of KT26's.
- Many drunken cries of "get faaaarked, you old bastard"
- Saw more mullets and rat's tails in one round of drinks that a year in Sydney
- 50% of locals smoke
- Height of fashion - board shorts for a formal dinner
- Pub dinner - unidentifiable, stringy meat and three veg boiled in a bag, doused with grey gravy
- Pub sold beer bottles that need a bottle opener to open, but could not find bottle opener
- J discovered that not one, but two of her associates are serving time in prison
- Height of fashion - middle aged woman wearing billowing pants. Drunken bloke at bar asks, "What happens when you fart?" Even I cracked up at that. You'd have to see the pants to understand.
- Got better food and coffee in Junee than Five Dock
- When did people stop drinking coffee with chicory?
Filleting Jared Diamond
As much as I enjoyed his books, I thought he had gone a bit nuts by the time he wrote his latest one on collapsing societies. Too much time in the jungle without wearing a hat.
Read the transcript here, or listen to the podcast, to get an alternative view.
My favourite bit about why Easter Island has no forests - nothing to do with erecting all those enormous heads. When the Polynesians arrived, they brought rats with them. The rats had no predators on Easter Island, so they went forth and multiplied - to plague proportions perhaps? The rats feasted on the seeds of the pine trees, so no more baby pine trees. As the people cleared the land for agriculture etc and moved on, the forest did not grow back thanks to the rats.
Population collapse - nothing to do with eco-suicide. In 1722, a Dutch ship arrived and various European plagues quickly did most of the population in.
In short, Diamond tells good fairy stories that sell well.
Read the transcript here, or listen to the podcast, to get an alternative view.
My favourite bit about why Easter Island has no forests - nothing to do with erecting all those enormous heads. When the Polynesians arrived, they brought rats with them. The rats had no predators on Easter Island, so they went forth and multiplied - to plague proportions perhaps? The rats feasted on the seeds of the pine trees, so no more baby pine trees. As the people cleared the land for agriculture etc and moved on, the forest did not grow back thanks to the rats.
Population collapse - nothing to do with eco-suicide. In 1722, a Dutch ship arrived and various European plagues quickly did most of the population in.
In short, Diamond tells good fairy stories that sell well.
The trouble with aid
My head is totally stuffed with cotton wool at the moment - came down with an evil cold this morning, so I blame any horrible prose to come on germs.
I had to turn up my car stereo this morning to hear a Counterpoint podcast on Foreign Aid, particularly aid to Africa. As I am having trouble thinking straight, I hope I get this right (and the bloke being interviewed was awfully hard to understand).
Assertion 1 - more money leaves Africa each year for tax havens that the west donates in aid. Therefore, tax havens should be closed down.
Assertion 2 - Africa does not need more aid (as Bono et al keep telling us) - it needs less, and it needs to be given set targets as to how aid will be wound down over a decade or two.
Assertion 3 - a lot of the policy prescriptions that have been attached to aid in recent years have done more harm than good, and have benefited some donor countries hugely. Eg, a country is told to privatise their water supply system, which they do, and the French move in and take it over.
Apart from being almost impossible to understand, it was an interesting talk. The rest of that Counterpoint episode is also one of the best I have heard this year.
To assertion 1 - if so much money is leaving Africa, it tells us something. It tells us a lot. It tells us that the investment climate sucks, and it presumably sucks due to god-awful government, corruption and thieving bureaucrats. If a Swiss banker is offering a dull, 6% return on your money with minimal (if any) tax, versus a 5% return in Africa with the possibility of not only all your profit being stolen, but your capital as well - where would any right thinking person put their money? I have no issue with giving money directly to Africans, such as sponsoring kids, but giving money to governments is madness. Giving money to our own governments is madness - witness NSW at present, and Victoria under Kirner and her lot. Total disaster. Obama looks like he is going to set a new record for utterly shite government, bettering even Gordon Brown. Whitlam was the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse rolled into one.
If our own, relatively clean and well run western governments can be such total arse-wipes that should have their spending powers ruthlessly amputated like the Black Knight in The Search for Holy Grail, why on earth should we give African despots anything at all?
Assertion 2 - spot on. The sooner they get weaned off aid, the better off they'll be. Do we get a heroin addict to clean up by giving them more heroin?
Assertion 3 - more than likely, knowing the perfidious French.
My brain is too gummed up to think properly.
I had to turn up my car stereo this morning to hear a Counterpoint podcast on Foreign Aid, particularly aid to Africa. As I am having trouble thinking straight, I hope I get this right (and the bloke being interviewed was awfully hard to understand).
Assertion 1 - more money leaves Africa each year for tax havens that the west donates in aid. Therefore, tax havens should be closed down.
Assertion 2 - Africa does not need more aid (as Bono et al keep telling us) - it needs less, and it needs to be given set targets as to how aid will be wound down over a decade or two.
Assertion 3 - a lot of the policy prescriptions that have been attached to aid in recent years have done more harm than good, and have benefited some donor countries hugely. Eg, a country is told to privatise their water supply system, which they do, and the French move in and take it over.
Apart from being almost impossible to understand, it was an interesting talk. The rest of that Counterpoint episode is also one of the best I have heard this year.
To assertion 1 - if so much money is leaving Africa, it tells us something. It tells us a lot. It tells us that the investment climate sucks, and it presumably sucks due to god-awful government, corruption and thieving bureaucrats. If a Swiss banker is offering a dull, 6% return on your money with minimal (if any) tax, versus a 5% return in Africa with the possibility of not only all your profit being stolen, but your capital as well - where would any right thinking person put their money? I have no issue with giving money directly to Africans, such as sponsoring kids, but giving money to governments is madness. Giving money to our own governments is madness - witness NSW at present, and Victoria under Kirner and her lot. Total disaster. Obama looks like he is going to set a new record for utterly shite government, bettering even Gordon Brown. Whitlam was the four horsemen of the economic apocalypse rolled into one.
If our own, relatively clean and well run western governments can be such total arse-wipes that should have their spending powers ruthlessly amputated like the Black Knight in The Search for Holy Grail, why on earth should we give African despots anything at all?
Assertion 2 - spot on. The sooner they get weaned off aid, the better off they'll be. Do we get a heroin addict to clean up by giving them more heroin?
Assertion 3 - more than likely, knowing the perfidious French.
My brain is too gummed up to think properly.
Monday, 8 June 2009
Clouds
Cool clouds, with moon. I liked the way this cloud ended in a sheer face - something you don't see every day.
In a jam
Blogging has been non-existent over the long weekend due to the need to make a 1300km round trip to buy some jam.
Well, ok, we did some other things along the way, but one thing we did return with was a box of very delicious jam. And mustard. And relish.
This is all from a mob called Catania Fruit Farm out at Griffith. They are well worth a visit - we try and drop in every year to restock the cupboards, and I have learned through bitter experience to buy up all the Five Cup Relish that I can get my hands on. I bought four jars this year - the last of his stock. It is just the most perfect thing to have with bacon and eggs, bar none. It's hot, but not too hot - not blow your head off hot. Just an elegant sufficiency of hot.
The Shiraz Jam is made with shiraz grapes, which is a bit different. The other oddment that we bought was tomato and passionfruit jam. There was another couple in the shop when we got there, and the woman exclaimed, "How wonderful, my mother used to make this, and I loved it", so we bought a jar to see what it is like. We've bought a lot of jam from this mob, and they've never sold us a dud yet, so I expect it will be good.
The bag of licorice that J bought from them didn't even make it home to get photographed.
Well, ok, we did some other things along the way, but one thing we did return with was a box of very delicious jam. And mustard. And relish.
This is all from a mob called Catania Fruit Farm out at Griffith. They are well worth a visit - we try and drop in every year to restock the cupboards, and I have learned through bitter experience to buy up all the Five Cup Relish that I can get my hands on. I bought four jars this year - the last of his stock. It is just the most perfect thing to have with bacon and eggs, bar none. It's hot, but not too hot - not blow your head off hot. Just an elegant sufficiency of hot.
The Shiraz Jam is made with shiraz grapes, which is a bit different. The other oddment that we bought was tomato and passionfruit jam. There was another couple in the shop when we got there, and the woman exclaimed, "How wonderful, my mother used to make this, and I loved it", so we bought a jar to see what it is like. We've bought a lot of jam from this mob, and they've never sold us a dud yet, so I expect it will be good.
The bag of licorice that J bought from them didn't even make it home to get photographed.
Thursday, 4 June 2009
An intriguing thought
I am going to bang on about education for a few minutes.
We've been having problems with Junior and maths. His test results have been rubbish, and we've been doing a bit of back and forth with his teachers - I say "teachers" because he seems to have had 2 or 3 so far this year, and not a lot of consistency.
That aside, we discovered last night how he has been doing his maths homework. The answers are in the back of the text book. When given a page or two of exercises to complete, he just copies down the answers and thinks that will suffice.
Oh boy, we busted him big time last night. The exercise he had to do involved calculating the square of a few numbers, and then the square root of some other numbers. I can remember how to calculate the square without using a calculator, but doing the square root has me baffled. I am going to have to Google that process later on.
The way we busted him is that he had no working for his calculations - just answers. One of the things he had to calculate was the square of 35. I could probably work that out in my head, but I prefer to get a pen and paper and do it the old way. I did it twice, just to make sure my brain had not gone soft, then checked it against the answer in the book.
Phew, brain is not too soft.
J challenged Junior on how he got the answer. He said he did it in his head. But then he couldn't do it again. Then she asked him to calculate the square root of 729 in his head, which he couldn't do (answer is 27). And on and on she went - he was unable to do a bloody thing. If it had been a proper test in the classroom, he would have scored 0.0 out of 100.
You have to wonder how, in this day of small class sizes, how this sort of thing slips by. We haven't been super-diligent at our end either, but unless the teacher calls to say things are going pear-shaped, you tend to assume that he is getting by ok.
Talk about tears before bedtime. He didn't like being pulled up on being a cheat, and then being pulled up on lying about it. There are going to be some changes around here from now on...
But that is not what I was going to write about. Instead, I wanted to write about teaching methods.
In my day, I don't remember having a maths text book. I really don't. What I remember is that we opened our exercise books and the teacher pulled out his stick of chalk and he wrote lots of equations on the board for us to solve. Or, if he was really modern, he turned on the overhead projector and put down a pre-prepared foil with lots of equations on it.
One way or another, we sat there in silence and copied out each equation, and then solved it in our book. We showed all our working etc etc. As we sat there copying, the teacher would walk around and check that we were in fact copying down the equations, and not doodling, and would whack us with a ruler if we weren't doing the right thing. If we had trouble, we'd sit back with our hand raised, and not utter a peep until called by name. Or, the teacher would note that we were struggling as he walked up and down the rows, peering over our shoulders at our work, and he'd stop and help out.
Funnily enough, they could teach a class of 30 or more with no problems using those methods.
These days, Junior is given a text book and worksheets. There is no copying. The equations are printed on the worksheet and they go through and work out the answers.
My point is this: the act of copying equations and so forth takes time. Whilst you are copying, you are concentrating too intently to have any time or energy to talk. Once copying is done, you are under pressure to work out the solutions, so you don't talk or fool around. A teacher can stand at the front of the room and tell at a glance who is beavering away at a solution, who is day dreaming and who is having problems.
All that is gone. I think Junior and his mates spend all their time chatting, and once they start, they don't stop. Under the ancient and crusty system that we were taught under, all idle chatter in the classroom was verboten - even if the teacher stepped out of the room. We knew that if he returned and caught us farting around, we'd be caned. So we kept farting around to a minimum and got on with the set task.
Speaking of that, a teacher leaving the room was always the signal for those that had been bottling up some gas to let rip, which was of course always hilarious to school-age boys; a particularly noisome and loathsome guff would be guaranteed to bring the house down.
Anyway, I wonder if all this new-age wank that has been introduced to the classroom is actually a root cause of poor results. If you remove the need to copy down stuff, you give kids more time. If you give them free time, they will use it the only way they know how - they will mess around and waste it. What they actually need is less free time, and more work. More drudgery if you like. It might be boring and seemingly pointless, but keeping the little buggers active all the time is crucial to maintaining control and focus.
On that note, parents should descend on their children's school and set fire to all photocopiers.
We've been having problems with Junior and maths. His test results have been rubbish, and we've been doing a bit of back and forth with his teachers - I say "teachers" because he seems to have had 2 or 3 so far this year, and not a lot of consistency.
That aside, we discovered last night how he has been doing his maths homework. The answers are in the back of the text book. When given a page or two of exercises to complete, he just copies down the answers and thinks that will suffice.
Oh boy, we busted him big time last night. The exercise he had to do involved calculating the square of a few numbers, and then the square root of some other numbers. I can remember how to calculate the square without using a calculator, but doing the square root has me baffled. I am going to have to Google that process later on.
The way we busted him is that he had no working for his calculations - just answers. One of the things he had to calculate was the square of 35. I could probably work that out in my head, but I prefer to get a pen and paper and do it the old way. I did it twice, just to make sure my brain had not gone soft, then checked it against the answer in the book.
Phew, brain is not too soft.
J challenged Junior on how he got the answer. He said he did it in his head. But then he couldn't do it again. Then she asked him to calculate the square root of 729 in his head, which he couldn't do (answer is 27). And on and on she went - he was unable to do a bloody thing. If it had been a proper test in the classroom, he would have scored 0.0 out of 100.
You have to wonder how, in this day of small class sizes, how this sort of thing slips by. We haven't been super-diligent at our end either, but unless the teacher calls to say things are going pear-shaped, you tend to assume that he is getting by ok.
Talk about tears before bedtime. He didn't like being pulled up on being a cheat, and then being pulled up on lying about it. There are going to be some changes around here from now on...
But that is not what I was going to write about. Instead, I wanted to write about teaching methods.
In my day, I don't remember having a maths text book. I really don't. What I remember is that we opened our exercise books and the teacher pulled out his stick of chalk and he wrote lots of equations on the board for us to solve. Or, if he was really modern, he turned on the overhead projector and put down a pre-prepared foil with lots of equations on it.
One way or another, we sat there in silence and copied out each equation, and then solved it in our book. We showed all our working etc etc. As we sat there copying, the teacher would walk around and check that we were in fact copying down the equations, and not doodling, and would whack us with a ruler if we weren't doing the right thing. If we had trouble, we'd sit back with our hand raised, and not utter a peep until called by name. Or, the teacher would note that we were struggling as he walked up and down the rows, peering over our shoulders at our work, and he'd stop and help out.
Funnily enough, they could teach a class of 30 or more with no problems using those methods.
These days, Junior is given a text book and worksheets. There is no copying. The equations are printed on the worksheet and they go through and work out the answers.
My point is this: the act of copying equations and so forth takes time. Whilst you are copying, you are concentrating too intently to have any time or energy to talk. Once copying is done, you are under pressure to work out the solutions, so you don't talk or fool around. A teacher can stand at the front of the room and tell at a glance who is beavering away at a solution, who is day dreaming and who is having problems.
All that is gone. I think Junior and his mates spend all their time chatting, and once they start, they don't stop. Under the ancient and crusty system that we were taught under, all idle chatter in the classroom was verboten - even if the teacher stepped out of the room. We knew that if he returned and caught us farting around, we'd be caned. So we kept farting around to a minimum and got on with the set task.
Speaking of that, a teacher leaving the room was always the signal for those that had been bottling up some gas to let rip, which was of course always hilarious to school-age boys; a particularly noisome and loathsome guff would be guaranteed to bring the house down.
Anyway, I wonder if all this new-age wank that has been introduced to the classroom is actually a root cause of poor results. If you remove the need to copy down stuff, you give kids more time. If you give them free time, they will use it the only way they know how - they will mess around and waste it. What they actually need is less free time, and more work. More drudgery if you like. It might be boring and seemingly pointless, but keeping the little buggers active all the time is crucial to maintaining control and focus.
On that note, parents should descend on their children's school and set fire to all photocopiers.
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
Riding to work - returning soon
I know this might sound odd, but I have been working for a company for nearly two years, and until this week, had only visited the office once. I have still not met the guy I am supposed to be working for. I initially did a phone interview with another bloke, who employed me. He has since moved on, and I have never met the new guy.
However, all that is about to change - my current contract is winding down, so I am moving into the company office to work from there on new contracts. Up until now, the company that I work for has simply shipped me out to clients, and I have worked solely from the client premises. Today was a big day - I got a security pass for the company that employs me! A company laptop is also on the way, and I might even get some business cards printed up. Woo-hoo.
I think.
The beauty of being out in the field on my own is that I have been utterly divorced from all the office bullshit, politics and paperwork. I work the hours I want (as I get paid by the hour) and I take on as much or as little work as I feel like doing. Plus I don't get too attached to my place of employment - I do my 6 or 9 months on site, get the job done, have some farewell beers and move on. I am currently working with a bloke who had been sitting in the same cubicle in the same building since 1994. Moving him two cubicles down the corridor a few months back was as wrenching as lopping off a limb. In the six months that I have been there, I have moved cubicles 3 times, and am moving again next week.
Anyway, the place where I am now is not bike friendly, so I have been getting fat and chubby sitting in the car going to and from work. The new place is quite bike friendly - the person I hot-desked next to today rides in, and they gave me the skinny on where to park and shower and where to put the wet towel (they stuffed theirs in behind their monitor - bleah). The setup rates about 5.5/10 - there are no lockers or drying areas, which is a major pain. I am used to keeping 5-6 shirts and one or two suits hanging up at work, rotating all of them through a local drycleaner once a week.
I won't have that luxury - I will have to take a fresh shirt in each day, which means an investment in panniers in order to keep it reasonably unwrinkled on the way in. For the last 4 years, all I have carried in and out each day is socks and jocks - clean one way, laundry the way back. In summer, I simply stuffed them in my rear jersey pocket and did away with a backpack entirely. Travel light, move fast.
Traffic shouldn't be an issue - I have already scoped out the route, and as far as I can tell, it does not involve any scary spots. I'm back in the city, so 90% of the route is the same as I have been riding for years - when get to the CBD, I'll simply turn left instead of going right an head for a different block.
As an aside, I have not had business cards for the better part of a decade, and I've never felt the need for them. I know that might sound odd - who can do business without a business card? - but I've somehow managed to work things so that I can do without them. If you ask me, they are vastly over rated.
Now comes the fun bit - scoping out the local cafes to find the best place to have a post-ride breakfast. There seem to be plenty of good candidates in the area, which is a bonus.
I get the feeling the first few weeks are going to be really tough in a physical sense. When you ride twice a day, 5 days a week, it takes some getting used to. The rides are short and fast, and there is no time for fluffing around in the morning after waking up - you wake up, dress, poo and go. All the niceties of shaving and starting to feel human etc are done once you reach the office. That also takes some adjusting to adapt the body to that sort of cycle. The riding style is completely different to say a 2-4 hour leisurely jaunt on a weekend, starting at 10am. I'll be getting up not long after 6am and riding as soon as the sun starts to look like it is about to appear above the horizon.
In about a month, I will probably really miss the car and all its comforts.
However, all that is about to change - my current contract is winding down, so I am moving into the company office to work from there on new contracts. Up until now, the company that I work for has simply shipped me out to clients, and I have worked solely from the client premises. Today was a big day - I got a security pass for the company that employs me! A company laptop is also on the way, and I might even get some business cards printed up. Woo-hoo.
I think.
The beauty of being out in the field on my own is that I have been utterly divorced from all the office bullshit, politics and paperwork. I work the hours I want (as I get paid by the hour) and I take on as much or as little work as I feel like doing. Plus I don't get too attached to my place of employment - I do my 6 or 9 months on site, get the job done, have some farewell beers and move on. I am currently working with a bloke who had been sitting in the same cubicle in the same building since 1994. Moving him two cubicles down the corridor a few months back was as wrenching as lopping off a limb. In the six months that I have been there, I have moved cubicles 3 times, and am moving again next week.
Anyway, the place where I am now is not bike friendly, so I have been getting fat and chubby sitting in the car going to and from work. The new place is quite bike friendly - the person I hot-desked next to today rides in, and they gave me the skinny on where to park and shower and where to put the wet towel (they stuffed theirs in behind their monitor - bleah). The setup rates about 5.5/10 - there are no lockers or drying areas, which is a major pain. I am used to keeping 5-6 shirts and one or two suits hanging up at work, rotating all of them through a local drycleaner once a week.
I won't have that luxury - I will have to take a fresh shirt in each day, which means an investment in panniers in order to keep it reasonably unwrinkled on the way in. For the last 4 years, all I have carried in and out each day is socks and jocks - clean one way, laundry the way back. In summer, I simply stuffed them in my rear jersey pocket and did away with a backpack entirely. Travel light, move fast.
Traffic shouldn't be an issue - I have already scoped out the route, and as far as I can tell, it does not involve any scary spots. I'm back in the city, so 90% of the route is the same as I have been riding for years - when get to the CBD, I'll simply turn left instead of going right an head for a different block.
As an aside, I have not had business cards for the better part of a decade, and I've never felt the need for them. I know that might sound odd - who can do business without a business card? - but I've somehow managed to work things so that I can do without them. If you ask me, they are vastly over rated.
Now comes the fun bit - scoping out the local cafes to find the best place to have a post-ride breakfast. There seem to be plenty of good candidates in the area, which is a bonus.
I get the feeling the first few weeks are going to be really tough in a physical sense. When you ride twice a day, 5 days a week, it takes some getting used to. The rides are short and fast, and there is no time for fluffing around in the morning after waking up - you wake up, dress, poo and go. All the niceties of shaving and starting to feel human etc are done once you reach the office. That also takes some adjusting to adapt the body to that sort of cycle. The riding style is completely different to say a 2-4 hour leisurely jaunt on a weekend, starting at 10am. I'll be getting up not long after 6am and riding as soon as the sun starts to look like it is about to appear above the horizon.
In about a month, I will probably really miss the car and all its comforts.
Why do people buy awful cakes?
J reminded us at dinner tonight that she always used to have either home made muffins or a cake of some sort on the go. There was no chance of her buying a cake from one of the chain cake shops that have sprung up like weeds over the last decade - she was too poor for that. Home made was the only way to go.
With that in mind, I pulled out my latest Donna Hay cookbook tonight and attempted to make chocolate puddings for dessert. They are sitting in the kitchen at present, cooling down. The house smells fantastic - there is an entire cup of cocoa in them. We will eat them as soon as I have finished blogging this post. I am not going to put the recipe up - for manly men to make - until they have been tested and passed as suitable for scoffing.
The thing that got me blogging though was that just as I was getting the ingredients out of the pantry, Monkey trooped into the kitchen and asked what I was doing. When I told him I was making a cake, he decided to stick around. Especially since it is a chocolate cake - his favourite.
He collected the eggs from the fridge - dropping and smashing one on the floor on the way - and attempted to eat the butter, because he thought it was cheese. He then watched intently as I stirred and whipped and blended and folded and poured the mixture into ramekins, and then came his proper introduction to cake making as a kid - I gave him the spoon to lick.
He took to that like an ant-eater to an ant-nest. His tongue went flick-flick-flick until the spoon was so clean and polished, you could see your face reflected in it.
And that's how things were like for me as a kid. Mum would mix up the ingredients, and I'd always get the spoon and/or bowl to lick afterwards. I think that is how I was introduced to the joys of cooking. Watching Monkey attack the spoon brought back those memories, and I hope that he takes to the kitchen like I did.
How does that happen though if all you do is buy cakes and muffins from a cake shop? What must it be like to grow up in a house that is completely bereft of the smells of a freshly baked cake, or apple pie, or fresh bread? Cake shops look ok, but they have no smell, for the cakes are baked elsewhere and trucked in. They are sterile and boring and completely lack those evocative scents of Paris.
There is no good reason to lack these smells. The puddings that I made tonight took less than 10 minutes to prepare, followed by 20 minutes in the oven (during which time I put my feet up and did some reading). Their preparation was not onerous; the kitchen sink is not buried under an enormous mound of pots and pans that require washing; my brain is not overly taxed by the experience.
I am sick of typing - it's time to eat chocolate pudding.
With that in mind, I pulled out my latest Donna Hay cookbook tonight and attempted to make chocolate puddings for dessert. They are sitting in the kitchen at present, cooling down. The house smells fantastic - there is an entire cup of cocoa in them. We will eat them as soon as I have finished blogging this post. I am not going to put the recipe up - for manly men to make - until they have been tested and passed as suitable for scoffing.
The thing that got me blogging though was that just as I was getting the ingredients out of the pantry, Monkey trooped into the kitchen and asked what I was doing. When I told him I was making a cake, he decided to stick around. Especially since it is a chocolate cake - his favourite.
He collected the eggs from the fridge - dropping and smashing one on the floor on the way - and attempted to eat the butter, because he thought it was cheese. He then watched intently as I stirred and whipped and blended and folded and poured the mixture into ramekins, and then came his proper introduction to cake making as a kid - I gave him the spoon to lick.
He took to that like an ant-eater to an ant-nest. His tongue went flick-flick-flick until the spoon was so clean and polished, you could see your face reflected in it.
And that's how things were like for me as a kid. Mum would mix up the ingredients, and I'd always get the spoon and/or bowl to lick afterwards. I think that is how I was introduced to the joys of cooking. Watching Monkey attack the spoon brought back those memories, and I hope that he takes to the kitchen like I did.
How does that happen though if all you do is buy cakes and muffins from a cake shop? What must it be like to grow up in a house that is completely bereft of the smells of a freshly baked cake, or apple pie, or fresh bread? Cake shops look ok, but they have no smell, for the cakes are baked elsewhere and trucked in. They are sterile and boring and completely lack those evocative scents of Paris.
There is no good reason to lack these smells. The puddings that I made tonight took less than 10 minutes to prepare, followed by 20 minutes in the oven (during which time I put my feet up and did some reading). Their preparation was not onerous; the kitchen sink is not buried under an enormous mound of pots and pans that require washing; my brain is not overly taxed by the experience.
I am sick of typing - it's time to eat chocolate pudding.
Where are the stories on failing businesses?
If my memory serves me correctly, every time we have a conservative government in power anywhere in the Anglosphere, as soon as economic conditions get a bit rough, the media is full of photos of soup lines, closed businesses and shuttered shops.
Where are those stories today? We see the odd story when there are lots of layoffs, like we saw with Bonds recently, but businesses large and small would be laying off more than Bonds in total every day of the week at present. Add to that the businesses that are closing their doors.
I walked along Parramatta Road tonight for a few kilometres. The "for lease" signs were everywhere - I couldn't be bothered counting them all. The car yard pictured above went bust just a few months ago - ages after the GFC struck - and several more along that stretch seem to have gone the same way.
Whilst we might not technically be in a recession, there is clearly a lot of pain being felt out there. Why is the media failing to cover it?
Where are those stories today? We see the odd story when there are lots of layoffs, like we saw with Bonds recently, but businesses large and small would be laying off more than Bonds in total every day of the week at present. Add to that the businesses that are closing their doors.
I walked along Parramatta Road tonight for a few kilometres. The "for lease" signs were everywhere - I couldn't be bothered counting them all. The car yard pictured above went bust just a few months ago - ages after the GFC struck - and several more along that stretch seem to have gone the same way. Whilst we might not technically be in a recession, there is clearly a lot of pain being felt out there. Why is the media failing to cover it?
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
A search that reveals nothing
Try searching this story in the SMH for the word "labor".
I can save you the bother if you like - it's not there.
Funny how when a Democrat or Labor politician is accused of doing something naughty, the press never identifies their politican party.
I can save you the bother if you like - it's not there.
Funny how when a Democrat or Labor politician is accused of doing something naughty, the press never identifies their politican party.
The insanity of public school "voluntary" contributions
From the Silly today:
Hell, I spend more than that each year on tennis lessons for junior. And more again on guitar lessons. Why would I even blink for a second at putting that amount, or more, into the school if I thought it would do some good?
(And I will hopefully spend that amount on skiing for Junior this year, snow permitting).
My biggest complaint with some of these public schools is how much they underestimate the willingness of parents to cough up extra cash for worthwhile educational causes. Because if the school does not do a good job, I am going to be on the hook for a lot more than $700 over the next few years for sending him to a private school. Hell, I'd happily pay $1,000 a year.
And I'd prefer to pay it directly, out of my pocket, rather than having it removed by the taxman, shuffled through the bureaucracy, and having about $850 pop out the other end, which would immediately fall into the hands of the head office educational bureaucrats, who would spend $800 of it on new leather lounges and give 50 bucks to the school and tell them that they can only spend it on breathalyser kits and mobility ramps.
A NORTH SHORE public high school is pressing parents to make "voluntary" contributions of up to $700 a year, more than double the rate charged by most schools, to make up for a "shortfall in government funding".I have no issue with a state school tapping parents for extra cash, particularly in Mosman. I know people over there that have sent their kids to the local public schools, which have a good name, and they have incomes in the multiples of hundreds of thousands. They spend more than $700 per year on ski lessons for their kids.
The Mosman High School P&C has written to parents urging them to pay an average of $400 for subject contributions in addition to the voluntary general contribution of up to $254 for year 12 students.
Hell, I spend more than that each year on tennis lessons for junior. And more again on guitar lessons. Why would I even blink for a second at putting that amount, or more, into the school if I thought it would do some good?
(And I will hopefully spend that amount on skiing for Junior this year, snow permitting).
My biggest complaint with some of these public schools is how much they underestimate the willingness of parents to cough up extra cash for worthwhile educational causes. Because if the school does not do a good job, I am going to be on the hook for a lot more than $700 over the next few years for sending him to a private school. Hell, I'd happily pay $1,000 a year.
And I'd prefer to pay it directly, out of my pocket, rather than having it removed by the taxman, shuffled through the bureaucracy, and having about $850 pop out the other end, which would immediately fall into the hands of the head office educational bureaucrats, who would spend $800 of it on new leather lounges and give 50 bucks to the school and tell them that they can only spend it on breathalyser kits and mobility ramps.
Monday, 1 June 2009
If you import poor people, you have more poverty
That is not my line by the way. I've imported it, in the spirit of globalisation.
I do wonder at times though whether ACOSS and all the other similar special pleading groups make a connection between a barmy immigration policy and their never ending cries for "more money for the poor".
We rarely see absolute poverty in Australia any more. If we do, it is more usually an outcome of poor personal choices - drug or alcohol addiction, single parent families, poor or non-existent English skills or behavioural patterns that put off even the most desperate employer. Or a combination of all of the above.
What we mostly have today is relative poverty. Some of the past indicators of absolute poverty were ragged clothes, a starved appearance, a lack of shoes and very poor health (brought about by vitamin deficiency, poor sanitation, lack of good food and heating in winter).
Starvation is a thing of the past - remember the Irish Spud Shortage, when emaciated bodies lined the roads? These days, obesity is more likely to afflict the poor.
As for clothes, even the meanest wasters can afford numerous pairs of tracksuit pants, hooded tops and flannel shirts from Target.
And shoes? When I see housing commission kids wearing more expensive trainers than I have on, I know absolute poverty is a thing of the past. We all have flush toilets, so sanitation is no longer a killer of the poor (dysentery, typhoid etc), and although housing might be cramped and expensive in Sydney, most of the poor have a nice brick and tiled place to call home. Around here, you even get million dollar water views with your housing commission crack den.
Vitamin deficiencies and poor diet are now a matter of choice, as in what you stuff your face with, rather than an absolute shortage of fresh fruit and vegetables. If we eat salted cabbage these days, it is not because it is the only way to make it last through the winter - instead, it is a culinary preference.
Enough of our poor.
The beauty of our capitalist system is that it allows everyone a chance to lift their position in the world. You can start with stuff-all, and acquire wealth throughout your life, ending up with a comfortable retirement. Look at uni students for instance. They graduate with not a lot to their name, except for a pile of debt and a bit of paper - and the chance to leverage that bit of paper into something good. Over a working life of say 40 years, many will earn enough to raise a family, pay off a nice house, own a number of cars, take overseas holidays and furnish that house in ways that were unimaginable to the richest billionaires 100 years ago. They do that through effort, thrift and a lot of sweat and a fair amount of stress.
But they can go from owing thousands of dollars in student fees to a substantial level of comfort over the course of their life. From serious negative net worth to millionaires perhaps.
And you no longer need a uni degree to make that transition. Miners, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and so forth now generally command wages that easily catapult them into the ranks of the comfortable middle class.
An interesting statistic from the US is that over the last few decades, even as the population has been growing, the absolute number of white and black Americans living in poverty has been declining. I will have to dig the numbers up, but the number of one of those groups living in poverty dropped from 9.8 million to 9 million over a decade or two as the total population grew by tens of millions. As nasty as capitalism can seem to many, that is not a bad result.
However, the total number of people living in poverty grew. Why? Because the total number of Hispanics living in poverty grew by a greater number than those whites and blacks that emerged from poverty. And most of those Hispanics were poor, illegal immigrants from south of the border.
In other words, if you allow in millions of poor people, you end up with more poor people in absolute terms. All your efforts to lift your indigenous poor out of poverty will be nullified if more poor people keep on coming in.
Now I have no complaint with allowing in lots of immigrants. I don't even mind letting in poor immigrants - after all, my in-laws arrived flat broke and unable to speak English.
But that didn't stop them from starting a business, learning English off their own bat, paying taxes, getting involved with their church and charities, putting their kids through school and dealing with everyone they met in English, not their native language. They did not ask for government handouts and government assistance and government guidance. They just did it. They are living proof that migrants can settle and fit in and get by without any government meddling or support - as are many, many other immigrants who have hoed the same row.
And that's how I like it. If you are poor, and you want to move here - good luck to you (assuming you get in legally). Come on in and have a go. You might succeed. You might fail. That's the nature of things. But please don't expect to be showered with services and support by the government.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the way things are today. We have bleeding-heart do-gooder groups on one hand bleating for money because they think that immigrants will do better if showered with cash and services, which just act as a crutch and a brake on assimilation (instead of adapting and settling in and); and on the other we have what I call the Migrant Mafia - small groups of "spokespeople" who extort money and patronage from governments in return for votes (which they assemble via the client state).
If an immigrant lands on our shores as a poor person, they are not going to lift themselves out of poverty by relying on the state for the rest of their life. They will only become wealthy through work - paid employment, or running their own business. Getting them addicted to the government tit as soon as they arrive is not doing them any favours.
I might be hard, but consigning someone to a life time of government dependent poverty is plain cruel.
I do wonder at times though whether ACOSS and all the other similar special pleading groups make a connection between a barmy immigration policy and their never ending cries for "more money for the poor".
We rarely see absolute poverty in Australia any more. If we do, it is more usually an outcome of poor personal choices - drug or alcohol addiction, single parent families, poor or non-existent English skills or behavioural patterns that put off even the most desperate employer. Or a combination of all of the above.
What we mostly have today is relative poverty. Some of the past indicators of absolute poverty were ragged clothes, a starved appearance, a lack of shoes and very poor health (brought about by vitamin deficiency, poor sanitation, lack of good food and heating in winter).
Starvation is a thing of the past - remember the Irish Spud Shortage, when emaciated bodies lined the roads? These days, obesity is more likely to afflict the poor.
As for clothes, even the meanest wasters can afford numerous pairs of tracksuit pants, hooded tops and flannel shirts from Target.
And shoes? When I see housing commission kids wearing more expensive trainers than I have on, I know absolute poverty is a thing of the past. We all have flush toilets, so sanitation is no longer a killer of the poor (dysentery, typhoid etc), and although housing might be cramped and expensive in Sydney, most of the poor have a nice brick and tiled place to call home. Around here, you even get million dollar water views with your housing commission crack den.
Vitamin deficiencies and poor diet are now a matter of choice, as in what you stuff your face with, rather than an absolute shortage of fresh fruit and vegetables. If we eat salted cabbage these days, it is not because it is the only way to make it last through the winter - instead, it is a culinary preference.
Enough of our poor.
The beauty of our capitalist system is that it allows everyone a chance to lift their position in the world. You can start with stuff-all, and acquire wealth throughout your life, ending up with a comfortable retirement. Look at uni students for instance. They graduate with not a lot to their name, except for a pile of debt and a bit of paper - and the chance to leverage that bit of paper into something good. Over a working life of say 40 years, many will earn enough to raise a family, pay off a nice house, own a number of cars, take overseas holidays and furnish that house in ways that were unimaginable to the richest billionaires 100 years ago. They do that through effort, thrift and a lot of sweat and a fair amount of stress.
But they can go from owing thousands of dollars in student fees to a substantial level of comfort over the course of their life. From serious negative net worth to millionaires perhaps.
And you no longer need a uni degree to make that transition. Miners, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and so forth now generally command wages that easily catapult them into the ranks of the comfortable middle class.
An interesting statistic from the US is that over the last few decades, even as the population has been growing, the absolute number of white and black Americans living in poverty has been declining. I will have to dig the numbers up, but the number of one of those groups living in poverty dropped from 9.8 million to 9 million over a decade or two as the total population grew by tens of millions. As nasty as capitalism can seem to many, that is not a bad result.
However, the total number of people living in poverty grew. Why? Because the total number of Hispanics living in poverty grew by a greater number than those whites and blacks that emerged from poverty. And most of those Hispanics were poor, illegal immigrants from south of the border.
In other words, if you allow in millions of poor people, you end up with more poor people in absolute terms. All your efforts to lift your indigenous poor out of poverty will be nullified if more poor people keep on coming in.
Now I have no complaint with allowing in lots of immigrants. I don't even mind letting in poor immigrants - after all, my in-laws arrived flat broke and unable to speak English.
But that didn't stop them from starting a business, learning English off their own bat, paying taxes, getting involved with their church and charities, putting their kids through school and dealing with everyone they met in English, not their native language. They did not ask for government handouts and government assistance and government guidance. They just did it. They are living proof that migrants can settle and fit in and get by without any government meddling or support - as are many, many other immigrants who have hoed the same row.
And that's how I like it. If you are poor, and you want to move here - good luck to you (assuming you get in legally). Come on in and have a go. You might succeed. You might fail. That's the nature of things. But please don't expect to be showered with services and support by the government.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the way things are today. We have bleeding-heart do-gooder groups on one hand bleating for money because they think that immigrants will do better if showered with cash and services, which just act as a crutch and a brake on assimilation (instead of adapting and settling in and); and on the other we have what I call the Migrant Mafia - small groups of "spokespeople" who extort money and patronage from governments in return for votes (which they assemble via the client state).
If an immigrant lands on our shores as a poor person, they are not going to lift themselves out of poverty by relying on the state for the rest of their life. They will only become wealthy through work - paid employment, or running their own business. Getting them addicted to the government tit as soon as they arrive is not doing them any favours.
I might be hard, but consigning someone to a life time of government dependent poverty is plain cruel.
Small OH&S issue here methinks
From Wikipedia:
Mk 3 Centurion Type K,British Army number 06 BA 16, later devolved under Contract Demand 2843 to the Australian Army, who gave it registration number 169041, was involved in a nuclear blast test at Emu Field in Australia in 1953.
It was placed about 500 metres from the device being detonated and left with the engine running. Upon return to the tank for subsequent examination it was found to have been pushed away from the blast point by about 2 metres and that its engine had stopped working only because it had run out of fuel. Antennas were missing, lights and periscopes were heavily sand blasted and the cloth mantlet cover was heavily carbonised but the tank was able to be driven away from the site. Had the tank been manned, it is unlikely that the crew would have survived due to the shock wave created by an atomic blast.
169041, subsequently nicknamed The Atomic Tank, was later used in the Vietnam War and is now located at Robertson Barracks in Palmerston, Northern Territory. Although other tanks were subjected to nuclear tests, 169041 is the only tank known to have withstood atomic tests and subsequently gone on for another 23 years of service, including 15 months on operational deployment in a war zone.---------------
I wonder if it glows in the dark?
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