Monday, 30 April 2012
This view never gets old
Some might see getting up before dawn as a terrible imposition, but once I get down to the water, I think it's worth it. Sure, some mornings are grey, wet and totally horrible - but others are quite amazing. I passed a couple of blokes last week who had lugged cameras and tripods down to this spot to photograph the dawn.
That black blob is a jogger running past. The camera makes it look like it's fairly light, but it's not. It's dark enough that there is a reasonable risk of me smashing into a jogger running on the bike path if I'm not careful.
I almost took out a pedestrian last week - I was so busy ogling the view, I forgot to watch where I was going.
The Cenotaph
I stopped at the Cenotaph after Anzac Day to have a look. Sydney Architecture has a good article on the construction and dedication.
There were a few individual dedications like the one above.I didn't think there would be room in amongst all the official wreaths and such.
It’s official: China now eats twice the meat of the US
Fascinating - and with graphs!
This confirms that there's no point in becoming a vegetarian to save the planet - your tiny effort will be swamped by the chowing-down of a billion Chinese.
This confirms that there's no point in becoming a vegetarian to save the planet - your tiny effort will be swamped by the chowing-down of a billion Chinese.
New Zealand wind farms - a public policy failure
Worth a read. Good old Fairfax gets mentioned again.
Finally, you may ask why none of this has been reported in the media. The answer is simple. NZ has huge liabilities under Kyoto, if it ever revives. Link The local paper, the Manawatu Standard, is like most papers in NZ, owned by Fairfax, which has a vested interest in climate alarmism and a one third ownership of Earth Hour. Link The Standard knows about the earthquake risk, the corrupt contract disenfranchising their own readers and devaluing hundreds of properties and the problems relating to dispatching wind generated electricity, but has chosen to remain silent. On the earthquake risk to Palmerston North, however, it has had plenty to say.
Finally, you may ask why none of this has been reported in the media. The answer is simple. NZ has huge liabilities under Kyoto, if it ever revives. Link The local paper, the Manawatu Standard, is like most papers in NZ, owned by Fairfax, which has a vested interest in climate alarmism and a one third ownership of Earth Hour. Link The Standard knows about the earthquake risk, the corrupt contract disenfranchising their own readers and devaluing hundreds of properties and the problems relating to dispatching wind generated electricity, but has chosen to remain silent. On the earthquake risk to Palmerston North, however, it has had plenty to say.
Bread, part whatever
Do you watch cooking shows? Have you ever seen people go "ooh" and "aah" over bread, listening to how crunchy it sounds when broken? Have you heard chefs and presenters rave on about how yeasty a dough smells?
I have, and I always thought it was a load of wank.
Until today.
I decided last week I was going to make bread on Saturday, so I got ultra prepared and made a small starter dough on Wednesday. I figured I'd feed it for two days, and add it to the dough on Saturday etc etc.
Saturday came, and then Sunday, and I found I just didn't have time to make bread.
So I fed it a bit each night, and watched it grow and grow and grow.
It was pretty normal for the first few days - I fed it a bit of flour and water each night, gave it a stir and put it back to bed. It bubbled up like normal dough, and that was that.
Then it changed.
After the 4th night, it started to smell like super-beer. It also became soup-like in its consistency - I didn't over water it - it just went that way. A very thick soup, but soup nonetheless.
By tonight, the yeasty smell was quite overpowering. It was a good yeasty smell too - evocative of.....yeast. I almost ran down to the shop to buy some Coopers Pale Ale in order to compare the aromas.
I managed to find a bit of time tonight, so I mixed up a normal batch of dough and then scraped in the starter. The soupy starter made a wetter dough than usual, but I could handle that.
Into the oven it went...blah blah blah...and out came a super crusty, beautifully risen loaf. When I turned the oven on, I put a thick, cast iron skillet on the bottom shelf. It gets pretty hot as the oven warms up - perfect for making steam. Just before putting the bread in, I boiled up about 1 1/2 cups of water, put the dough in and then poured some boiling water over the skillet. That filled the oven completely with steam, and the steam is apparently what helps to form a crust. I checked the bread after 20 minutes, and poured in more hot water at that point.
I think I've finally got the knack. It's only taken about 10 years, 100 kilos of flour and endless totally or partially failed loaves. Boy, I'm a fast learner.
Crikey
I never thought I'd see Crikey having a go at Earth Hour.
But they have. Thanks, David Salter.
What tends to be forgotten — or deftly sidestepped — is that Earth Hour began in 2007 as a promotional campaign for Fairfax dreamed up by an advertising agency, Leo Burnett (the Earth Hour website now describes this genesis as a “partnership with brand co-owners, Fairfax Media”). The basic idea pitched by the advertising “creatives” five years ago was to cloak the Fairfax broadsheet mastheads with the feel-good moral superiority of joining the Good Fight against global warming while adding to paid sales and making an extra little pot of cash from spin-off custom display advertising. To clinch the warm-inner-glow value of their pitch, the World Wildlife Fund was enlisted as a partner, complete with their heart-tugging little Panda Bear logo.
This was the cynical commodification of concern — flattering readers with a false sense of empowerment while hoping to make a fast buck behind their backs. And it worked. Pledges to participate in the empty gesture of turning off the lights for one hour boomed and Fairfax pocketed a tidy profit from a 56-page colour liftout crammed with conscience advertising largely gouged from energy companies greenmailed into buying space. (There’s been no sign of a similar supplement this year, a measure of how much the corporate world has lost interest in buying environmental brownie points.)
But they have. Thanks, David Salter.
What tends to be forgotten — or deftly sidestepped — is that Earth Hour began in 2007 as a promotional campaign for Fairfax dreamed up by an advertising agency, Leo Burnett (the Earth Hour website now describes this genesis as a “partnership with brand co-owners, Fairfax Media”). The basic idea pitched by the advertising “creatives” five years ago was to cloak the Fairfax broadsheet mastheads with the feel-good moral superiority of joining the Good Fight against global warming while adding to paid sales and making an extra little pot of cash from spin-off custom display advertising. To clinch the warm-inner-glow value of their pitch, the World Wildlife Fund was enlisted as a partner, complete with their heart-tugging little Panda Bear logo.
This was the cynical commodification of concern — flattering readers with a false sense of empowerment while hoping to make a fast buck behind their backs. And it worked. Pledges to participate in the empty gesture of turning off the lights for one hour boomed and Fairfax pocketed a tidy profit from a 56-page colour liftout crammed with conscience advertising largely gouged from energy companies greenmailed into buying space. (There’s been no sign of a similar supplement this year, a measure of how much the corporate world has lost interest in buying environmental brownie points.)
Sunday, 29 April 2012
The ideal BBQ?
I'm currently pining for the old fashioned type of BBQ, which was just a slab of metal over a fire. No lips on the edge, no hole in the middle - just a roughly cut slab. It sometimes wasn't very flat, and the BBQ itself certainly wasn't level.
The beauty of that design is it allowed all the fat to drain off the edge, either into the fire, onto your feet or onto the grass behind the BBQ. Once you got the tilt setup properly, you had a self draining BBQ.
I spent yesterday cleaning our fancy modern BBQ. It's got a tiny drain hole in the centre, and it clogs faster than Peter Slipper can fill out a taxi voucher. The fat drains into a container underneath that holds less than half a cup by volume. That means crawling under the BBQ on a regular basis to empty the fat container.
Bleah.
BBQ design needs to go one way or the other - either build a fat trap that is so small, it needs to be emptied after every use, or install one the size of a large bucket; one so large, you throw it out when you get rid of the BBQ, and never have to bother emptying it.
You know it makes sense.
The beauty of that design is it allowed all the fat to drain off the edge, either into the fire, onto your feet or onto the grass behind the BBQ. Once you got the tilt setup properly, you had a self draining BBQ.
I spent yesterday cleaning our fancy modern BBQ. It's got a tiny drain hole in the centre, and it clogs faster than Peter Slipper can fill out a taxi voucher. The fat drains into a container underneath that holds less than half a cup by volume. That means crawling under the BBQ on a regular basis to empty the fat container.
Bleah.
BBQ design needs to go one way or the other - either build a fat trap that is so small, it needs to be emptied after every use, or install one the size of a large bucket; one so large, you throw it out when you get rid of the BBQ, and never have to bother emptying it.
You know it makes sense.
Thursday, 26 April 2012
This bloke seems to get around
Australia Day riot, Canberra |
Kings Cross shooting |
Is it possible to stuff up a creme brulee?
Yes, it most certainly is.
I've eaten quite a few creme brulees in my time, most of them in restaurants. I've made a few at home, and generally stuffed them up until I got my hands on a blow torch. For some reason, doing the sugar under the griller never worked very well.
I tried making them again last night, using a recipe from SBS.
Big mistake.
I used the same site earlier in the week to make soufflés - the recipe I downloaded from SBS was a dog's breakfast, but the souffles turned out ok. Thankfully, the recipe came with a video and I was able to bypass the shortcomings of the recipe by watching the video a few times. As I was left with a bowl full of excess egg yolks, creme brulee seemed like the obvious way to use them up.
I've made plenty of simple baked custards over the last few years, but without the crunchy topping. Every single one of them has worked perfectly. How hard can it be to make a baked custard?
Thanks to SBS, I got yellow soup. A few of them were reasonably well set, but they were anything but firm.
Still, we spread sugar on the top (after refrigerating them overnight) and gave them a bash with the blow torch. However, because the custard hadn't really set on a few of them, the sugar got wet, and then it burned. Not the best toffee topping I've ever experienced.
I sensibly gave the blow torch to Junior to toast the sugar, as he likes playing with fire and the whole family should be involved in producing meals; but when he went to put it out, it pretty much exploded in a ball of flame in his hands. Something to do with blow back I guess. All it did was singe off a few hairs - I've seen much bigger fireballs in hotel bath tubs. We ignored the smell of burning hair and the sound of swearing teenagers and sat down to eat yellow soup with a blackened sugar topping.
It was about as appetising as it sounds. Not my finest hour in the kitchen. I'll give it a go again next week, but I'll be sticking to Donna Hay for the recipe.
I've eaten quite a few creme brulees in my time, most of them in restaurants. I've made a few at home, and generally stuffed them up until I got my hands on a blow torch. For some reason, doing the sugar under the griller never worked very well.
I tried making them again last night, using a recipe from SBS.
Big mistake.
I used the same site earlier in the week to make soufflés - the recipe I downloaded from SBS was a dog's breakfast, but the souffles turned out ok. Thankfully, the recipe came with a video and I was able to bypass the shortcomings of the recipe by watching the video a few times. As I was left with a bowl full of excess egg yolks, creme brulee seemed like the obvious way to use them up.
I've made plenty of simple baked custards over the last few years, but without the crunchy topping. Every single one of them has worked perfectly. How hard can it be to make a baked custard?
Thanks to SBS, I got yellow soup. A few of them were reasonably well set, but they were anything but firm.
Still, we spread sugar on the top (after refrigerating them overnight) and gave them a bash with the blow torch. However, because the custard hadn't really set on a few of them, the sugar got wet, and then it burned. Not the best toffee topping I've ever experienced.
I sensibly gave the blow torch to Junior to toast the sugar, as he likes playing with fire and the whole family should be involved in producing meals; but when he went to put it out, it pretty much exploded in a ball of flame in his hands. Something to do with blow back I guess. All it did was singe off a few hairs - I've seen much bigger fireballs in hotel bath tubs. We ignored the smell of burning hair and the sound of swearing teenagers and sat down to eat yellow soup with a blackened sugar topping.
It was about as appetising as it sounds. Not my finest hour in the kitchen. I'll give it a go again next week, but I'll be sticking to Donna Hay for the recipe.
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
Just faffing around
I'm fiddling with the width settings and my photo sizes to see if I can make the photos come out a bit better. I'm sick of the way Blogger sizes photos.
I've set the width of the entire blog to 1200 pixels and the sidebar to 200 pixels. The photo below has been resized (keeping the same aspect ratio) to 900 pixels wide, and I've inserted it at "original size". That means it "should" fit into the body of the blog with a bit left over on each side.
It should turn out alright, unless you have a pathetically small monitor.
I've set the width of the entire blog to 1200 pixels and the sidebar to 200 pixels. The photo below has been resized (keeping the same aspect ratio) to 900 pixels wide, and I've inserted it at "original size". That means it "should" fit into the body of the blog with a bit left over on each side.
It should turn out alright, unless you have a pathetically small monitor.
Monday, 23 April 2012
Monday
Some days you're cooking, and other days, you're totally cooked. I was utterly nutted this morning - rotating the cranks at just a sedate pace was hard work. It's not like I spent the weekend on the turps or anything - it was just one of those weeks where I was run down to a bare nub by Friday night. A weekend of recovery didn't do much for me.
Dunno what happened during the day though, but I was cooking on the way home tonight - I just flew home. Riding was easy and I had power to burn. The body is a strange, strange thing.
Sunset was pretty spectacular tonight as I came home around the Bay - pity about all the bloody trees spoiling the view. You've got this smashing water vista, and the blasted council plants trees between the water and the path so the view is almost totally blocked. What's the point of laying a path around a feature with a great view if you're then going to stuff up the view?
This bloke is one of the red-light jumping breed. He jumped, or tried to jump, every single light on the way out of town. I love it when these turkeys do that - it gives me someone to chase. I stay nice and legal and give them a nice long lead, and then I chase them down like a ferret after a rabbit.
Or perhaps a buffalo chasing a turtle might be a better analogy.
The only way to cut time off your ride on my commute is to be fast and strong on the hills. Jumping red lights won't give you the sort of time gains you'll get from powering up hills faster than everyone around you. When you see a cyclist jump a red light, just think this thought: "Piss weak".
That is all.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Senator Ludlam visits Afghanistan
Senator Scott Ludlam has posted an excellent blog on his recent visit to Afghanistan. Whilst I disagree with his party (the Greens), he's a very entertaining writer. The whole thing is really worth reading.
I pity the poor bugger - the Greens aren't renowned for getting along with or understanding the military. They just don't get the mindset. Still, I give him full marks for trying.
One bit in particular totally cracked me up:
Pausing at the FOB (the only moment of hostility so far – “Which one’s the Green? You can wait outside the base,”)
Think about that for a minute - in how many armies around the world could a footsoldier get away with a wisecrack like that to a serving member of parliament? And does Senator Ludlam go berserk and demand that the digger be strung from the nearest yardarm? No. He blogs about it so that we can all have a laugh.
It's little moments like that where you realise you really are living in the greatest country on earth.
-----------
The other thing I like is that Senator Ludlam is willing to tell it like it is, even if what he's hearing probably clashes totally with everything he believes in:
One thing is pretty clear. The ADF will do what they’re asked – this is a focussed, professional, task-driven organisation and the people at the sharpest end of it spent their lives training to be sent into harm’s way. They are completely, unambiguously aware of the risk – they’ve all attended ramp ceremonies where their mates’ casket is repatriated to family back into Australia.
All the same, there’s an eagerness to prove themselves. The further forward you get, the happier crew are to be there and the less interested in being pulled back into safety. Having spent years training, most of them really, really want to be in theatre.
“This is a great battle lab for us.”
“Al Qaeda has been removed from the battlespace.”
“This is mostly about the US alliance.”
“I’d do this whether you paid me or not.”
Like I said, read the lot. I just wish the "news" that we got from our usual media outlets was this good.
I pity the poor bugger - the Greens aren't renowned for getting along with or understanding the military. They just don't get the mindset. Still, I give him full marks for trying.
One bit in particular totally cracked me up:
Pausing at the FOB (the only moment of hostility so far – “Which one’s the Green? You can wait outside the base,”)
Think about that for a minute - in how many armies around the world could a footsoldier get away with a wisecrack like that to a serving member of parliament? And does Senator Ludlam go berserk and demand that the digger be strung from the nearest yardarm? No. He blogs about it so that we can all have a laugh.
It's little moments like that where you realise you really are living in the greatest country on earth.
-----------
The other thing I like is that Senator Ludlam is willing to tell it like it is, even if what he's hearing probably clashes totally with everything he believes in:
One thing is pretty clear. The ADF will do what they’re asked – this is a focussed, professional, task-driven organisation and the people at the sharpest end of it spent their lives training to be sent into harm’s way. They are completely, unambiguously aware of the risk – they’ve all attended ramp ceremonies where their mates’ casket is repatriated to family back into Australia.
All the same, there’s an eagerness to prove themselves. The further forward you get, the happier crew are to be there and the less interested in being pulled back into safety. Having spent years training, most of them really, really want to be in theatre.
“This is a great battle lab for us.”
“Al Qaeda has been removed from the battlespace.”
“This is mostly about the US alliance.”
“I’d do this whether you paid me or not.”
Like I said, read the lot. I just wish the "news" that we got from our usual media outlets was this good.
Fairfax invents new military rank
The sub-editing at Fairfax really is hitting new lows. I've always thought that their military coverage was pretty pathetic, but this week, it plumbed the depths by coming up with the rank of "Lieutenant-Corporal" - not once, but twice.
I think they meant to say "Lance Corporal", which the yanks also describe as an E-3.
What next? Captain-Major? Sergeant-Colonel?
Saturday, 21 April 2012
Baker's delight
I put up a video last weekend about kneading bread. This weekend, I decided to do rather than watch. In the past, I've tried to be sophisticated and have attempted various types of buns, rolls and baguettes - they've been a lot of work and never really worked as well as I would have liked. So this week, I just made up my usual portion of dough (500gm of flour, 350gm of water, 10gm of salt and 10gm of yeast) and turned out a single loaf. Here it is proving, lightly dusted with flour and polenta (I meant to use semolina, but I mixed the tubs of yellow stuff up). I use the plain old white flour that you get at the supermarket - the ingredients shown above cost a bit over 50 cents.
I gave it two minutes in the mixer to bring it together, and then spent 10 minutes manually bashing, stretching and kneading it on the kitchen bench. After that little effort, I couldn't raise my arms. I am getting completely soft and pathetic.
The fancy bakers slice their dough open with old fashioned razor blades, and I can see why - because they are so thin and sharp, they don't "grab" the dough like a knife - even a brutally sharp knife. The way bakers slash the dough is supposed to be their signature - not sure what my signature says about me. Except that I need to get a razor blade.
24 minutes in a hot oven sitting on a pizza stone (I crank mine up to as hot as it will go about half an hour before starting). I put a cast iron lid in the bottom and let it get really hot - just before putting in the loaf, I pour boiling water onto the lid so that it produces great gouts of steam. Apparently that helps with crusty crust formation.
I was going to let it cool off, but that thought lasted all of 5 minutes. Here it is, about to be slathered with $9 butter. Yep - cheap 50 cent bread and expensive butter. It's a good combination. I was planning on using it to make steak sandwiches for dinner, but it didn't last that long. This stuff is perfect with steak. Or vegemite for that matter. You know it's good when the kids descend on the kitchen and demolish it. I was quite taken aback last month when we had a tribe of teenagers in the house and they declared my bread to be "the best they've ever had". I thought their taste in bread would have been shaped by Subway and McDonalds - but evidently not.
I then did something totally different - I got organised and made up a poolish for tomorrow's batch. I'll see if my arms and shoulders are up to doing it all by hand.
Pack light and she'll be right
Hilarious contrasts in packing styles in this video - whether you're into cycling or not, it's just amazing what a female can lug around with her. An ex-infantry types will probably have kittens when they watch this...
I back packed around Europe 20 years ago. I was on the road for over 3 months, and everything I needed fitted easily into a single echelon bag. Mine was quite filthy when I left - it had been out bush with me for months and never been washed. I took it figuring that thieves would first plunder the expensive looking back packs of my fellow travellers, and they'd leave mine alone - it looked like the sort of thing a wino would carry with him. And funnily enough, that worked most of the time. It took me an entire year of being away to fill it to the brim.
I spent a few days travelling with an American female. Her makeup kit weighed more than my single eshy.
Before I had kids, I could leave town for the weekend with nothing more than the following:
I back packed around Europe 20 years ago. I was on the road for over 3 months, and everything I needed fitted easily into a single echelon bag. Mine was quite filthy when I left - it had been out bush with me for months and never been washed. I took it figuring that thieves would first plunder the expensive looking back packs of my fellow travellers, and they'd leave mine alone - it looked like the sort of thing a wino would carry with him. And funnily enough, that worked most of the time. It took me an entire year of being away to fill it to the brim.
I spent a few days travelling with an American female. Her makeup kit weighed more than my single eshy.
Before I had kids, I could leave town for the weekend with nothing more than the following:
- toothbrush
- spare undies
- wallet
The teenager already has that ethic. He can go out all night without even taking any of these with him. I wonder how the rest of the kids will go?
Food miles - why they're a crock
But the local food movement now threatens to devolve into another one of those self-indulgent — and self-defeating — do-gooder dogmas. Arbitrary rules, without any real scientific basis, are repeated as gospel by “locavores,” celebrity chefs and mainstream environmental organizations. Words like “sustainability” and “food-miles” are thrown around without any clear understanding of the larger picture of energy and land use.
The result has been all kinds of absurdities. For instance, it is sinful in New York City to buy a tomato grown in a California field because of the energy spent to truck it across the country; it is virtuous to buy one grown in a lavishly heated greenhouse in, say, the Hudson Valley.
Studies have shown that whether it’s grown in California or Maine, or whether it’s organic or conventional, about 5,000 calories of energy go into one pound of lettuce. Given how efficient trains and tractor-trailers are, shipping a head of lettuce across the country actually adds next to nothing to the total energy bill.
More here. Read it all.
Riding in the wet
It's been a wet week here in Sydney - more local flooding, and our big dam is overflowing again. As usual, those I work and socialise with are rather stunned that I continue to ride when the heavens are opened.
Why shouldn't I?
It's not like rain will kill you, especially when it's between 16 and 20 degrees at the moment. It rains, I get wet, I finish my ride and have a shower. What's the problem with that?
I had a run in with Sod's Law this week.
Monday - I could hear rain spattering on the roof when I woke up. I considered going all soft and sleeping in a bit in the hope it would pass, but I hardened up and got on with it. By the time I hit the road, it had stopped raining, and the rain held off until I was about 100 metres from work. About a minute after I parked the bike, it started utterly bucketing down - I couldn't see the building across the road for a few minutes. It just goes to show that being soft will get you soaked.
Tuesday - got soaked on the way home, so I put the shoes and helmet in the dryer so they'd be dry the next morning. You've got to think ahead...
Wednesday - woke up to find it bucketing down. Put dry shoes, gloves and helmet on, had wet shoes and wet helmet 10 seconds later. Dried shoes etc again on Wednesday night.
Thursday - repeat of above, except I didn't bother drying anything. Why go through the effort when it will just get soaked again the next morning?
Friday - pulled on wet shoes, helmet and gloves and rode to work without a drop of rain. Arrrghhhh! Had to put up with wet shoes and socks on the way home too, and it didn't rain at all.
Like I said - Sod's Law in action.
Anyway, why ride in the rain?
Because the alternative for me is to catch a bus, and buses become as unreliable as Italian boyfriends when it gets wet. On a good day, I can go door to door by bus in 45 minutes. Due to traffic etc, those good days are rare. It can take 90 minutes to get home, most of that being spent waiting at the bus stop in town for a late bus. When it rains, the timetable goes out the window. Work colleagues who came by public transport were arriving 1-2 hours late this week, and they were all wet and bedraggled.
It take me 40-45 minutes on the bike most days. If it's raining really hard, you can add 5 minutes to that. Unless I have a breakdown or puncture, my trip to and from work is as timely as a Swiss watch. I really can't stand walking to the bus stop in the rain in a suit, standing under a leaking bus shelter (in a suit), standing in a slow moving, steamed-up bus as it inches into town, and then running the gauntlet of the city streets and puddles to get to the office. And then doing it again getting home, which usually involves having your umbrella blown inside-out halfway home. What would you prefer - getting wet and being late in a suit, or getting wet and being on time in lycra?
Thursday, 19 April 2012
The SMH and more Green astro-turfing
The SMH ran a piece yesterday by Samantha Lee, the co-chairwoman of the National Coalition for Gun Control. It featured all the usual emotional triggers that these sorts of pieces are famed for:
- Spree killer - Martin Bryant - tick
- Columbine massacre - tick
- "military-style" (because anything to do with the military is bad and dangerous) - tick
- "high powered" - tick (can anyone point me at a "low powered" handgun that is useful?)
At the same time, our favourite Green MP, David Shoebridge, put out a press release along the same lines. He got a lot of comments - and sooked up after 2 days and closed them.
Try this for yourself - do a Google search for "National Coalition for Gun Control". I did - and I couldn't find any contact details or a website. I did find this entry on Wikipedia though:
The NCGC has no public contact details and does not solicit public membership and may in fact not have any members at all.
The NCGC has been described as consisting of two people and a fax machine - I guess two people can be a coalition. It has also been described as having been "created to serve the ego of... Lee Rhiannon" - a Green.
Instead of inventing front organisations like this, why don't the Greens have the spine to simply come out and make their arguments in public? I know full well why they use a grandly titled organisation like the NCGC - the words "National" and "Coalition" suggests that this organisation has thousands or tens of thousands of members across the country, when nothing could be further from the truth. It is an attempt to create the appearance of a groundswell of public opinion where no such thing exists.
I'll leave you with some stuff to read:
The first is a short pamphlet on trends in firearm theft in NSW. It's from the beautifully named WISH - Women in Shooting and Hunting. I think you can guess where they're coming from. The graph below is from their pamphlet.
The second is a Crime and Justice bulletin on firearms and violent crime in NSW 1995-2005. Sure, it's out of date, but it provides some useful context about "gun crime". I find it interesting that in 2005, more people were murdered by someone without a weapon (unless you class fists as a weapon) than with a firearm. And of course "firearms" includes rifles, shotguns and pistols.
Here's a third bit of reading. The killjoys at the NCGC also want to ban paintball in Australia.
And there was me thinking that painball was just hellishly good fun. I've never thought for a minute that it is a "legitimisation of the American gun culture". These Greentards really need to get out more.
This Roland Browne character keeps his fax machine busy. Here he is writing to the Attorney General, angling for a spot on a committee:
This is a bit rich, coming from a bloke that makes it damned near impossible to join his organisation.
Hang on, after trawling through the AG site, I did find a link to NCGC. Here it is.
Well, that was kind of disappointing. I guess their organisation isn't big enough to include a webmaster.
I just keep digging stuff up. The NCGC suggested I visit the Australian Institute of Criminology, so I did. I found this interesting graph. Again, it finishes in 2006-07, but it's interesting to see that if someone wants to kill someone else, they'll probably find a way to do it.
"There has been a pronounced change in the type of weapons used in homicide since monitoring began. Firearm use has declined by more than half since 1989-90 as a proportion of homicide methods, and there has been an upward trend in the use of knives and sharp instruments, which in 2006-07 accounted for nearly half of all homicide victims."
That's enough for one night. I don't mind that the NCGC and the Greens are working hand in glove - I just wish they'd be open about it when they write an opinion piece for Fairfax. It's the secrecy and hidden agendas and relationships that annoys me most of all.
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Me tampering with a photo
The original |
All I have done to the top photo is to compress it a bit - I compress all my photos because long upload times annoy me. But apart from that, there are no changes from when it came out of the camera.
Tampered cloud |
Error level analysis |
Have a look at these Fairfax photos and ponder how much they might have been fiddled with in order to produce the error levels that are evident.
Oh not, not you again - extended remix
Add caption |
I see lots of cyclists on the Anzac Bridge, and plenty of walkers and joggers - but not often do you see a pram.
I put a lot of effort into being comfortable. You might find that a bit strange, given that I choose to ride a bike without springs or shock absorbers and on high pressure tyres less than an inch wide. And I ride regardless of the weather or the road conditions. However, my bike is professionally sized and fitted - I spent several hours on a stand in the bike shop having parts swapped out and various angles and dimensions adjusted. It's been tailored to my body and its peculiarities so that I can cycle long distances with minimal discomfort and stress whilst offering maximum power.
The clown above though did none of that. I have never seen such an uncomfortable cyclist. He was all style over substance, riding a fixie with the most ridiculous handlebars you could find anywhere. This photo doesn't do it justice, but it looked like it hurt just to sit on that bike. Some people are idiots - victims of fashion. I pity the fool.
Hey - clear skies. Haven't seen that for a while.
A bloke in a canoe on the Bay.
And here he is again, in widescreen.
And now for something different. On weekdays, the dominant cyclist is the commuter. They come in all shapes and sizes, and they tend to be encumbered with back packs or panniers and they ride all sorts of bikes. Come the weekends, the commuters have a sleep in and the fitness nuts emerge for long, early morning training rides. I latched onto the back of these two on Saturday morning and hung on for a quick spin down to the Rocks. It was an ...... experience. Let me just leave it at that.
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
Is Fairfax doctoring photos?
The SMH has run two carbon related stories in the last week:
NSW drops carbon challenge, and
Mac Gen takes $700m carbon tax writeoff
Both stories were accompanied by photos showing big black clouds emitting from chimneys.
I took one look at these photos and figured that they're too good to be true.
Here's the screenshots for each story:
There's an online tool called FotoForensics that you can use to examine photos to see if they've been altered. The tutorial (link above) is worth reading to see how photos can be interrogated.
Here are the error level analysis results of these two photos:
If I've read the tutorial properly, and understand how error level analysis works, it would appear that the bottom photo has been sexed up a bit - all that white in the bottom right hand corner (which appears as billowing clouds) has high error levels, which means it's been altered. You can look at the analysis here and decide for yourself. I suggest you plug in a few of your own photos and see how they turn out for the sake of a comparison. You could even try doctoring one yourself and then analysing it.
Question - if one of these photos has been altered, and that hasn't been disclosed, then is that a breach of ethics? What will the Press Council have to say about that? Why is it that Fairfax have to illustrate every story relating to CO2, a colourless gas, with big clouds?
I realise that is more than one question. But that's too bad.
NSW drops carbon challenge, and
Mac Gen takes $700m carbon tax writeoff
Both stories were accompanied by photos showing big black clouds emitting from chimneys.
I took one look at these photos and figured that they're too good to be true.
Here's the screenshots for each story:
There's an online tool called FotoForensics that you can use to examine photos to see if they've been altered. The tutorial (link above) is worth reading to see how photos can be interrogated.
Here are the error level analysis results of these two photos:
If I've read the tutorial properly, and understand how error level analysis works, it would appear that the bottom photo has been sexed up a bit - all that white in the bottom right hand corner (which appears as billowing clouds) has high error levels, which means it's been altered. You can look at the analysis here and decide for yourself. I suggest you plug in a few of your own photos and see how they turn out for the sake of a comparison. You could even try doctoring one yourself and then analysing it.
Question - if one of these photos has been altered, and that hasn't been disclosed, then is that a breach of ethics? What will the Press Council have to say about that? Why is it that Fairfax have to illustrate every story relating to CO2, a colourless gas, with big clouds?
I realise that is more than one question. But that's too bad.
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Can't raise my arms
Just tried doing this. Can barely move my arms now. Wonder if I'll have enough strength to get the dough into the oven once it's finished proving........
This of course is why we invented mixers.
This of course is why we invented mixers.
Economics - specialisation
I think he's done about 20 of these now. I'll have to sit down and watch a few more.
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Un-ugly Fords (for once)
Imagine trying to tune those... |
I've owned two cars with twin-carbs. Both were complete bastards to tune properly. Imagine having eight....
Flaming heck! |
8 carbies - yep, that sounds right |
I wrote about the cycling group that I went for a ride with being mostly male and mostly 40-somethings. The hot rod crowd was fairly similar, except that the men were a bit older, greyer and had more visible tattoos. And they were uglier. I had one eye on the cars and one eye on the crowd, scoping for Cav. However, even he would have been lost in the sea of ugly old blokes.
I just love that interior - and check out the stubbie holder sitting on the shifter.
Is this golliwog black enough for you? |
Fords...good looking Fords. I must be dreaming.
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