Ronald Brak

How to Hit on Japanese Models

2012-02-03T08:34:00.003+10:30

Ronald Brak's Real Life Survival Tip #1

2012-02-02T23:23:00.005+10:30

Welcome to Ronald Brak's survival tips, a possibly regular feature where you can learn real life survival tactics to help you in real life survival situations. You won't find any useless advice on how to survive bull attacks or falling elevators here, but vital tips on how to survive things that are actually likely to kill you – yes, you! So provided you are not suffering from bovine related aggression or currently experiencing zero gee in a lift shaft, read on.

Tip 1, Pneumonia and other stuff that makes you lungs cry: You're Australian and it's a cold winter's night in the foreign country you have travelled to and you don't know where to turn for medical help and medical help mostly consists of poking people sharp sticks anyway. Alternatively you're American and just broke. Either way, you have that terrible feeling in your chest that only comes from intracellular fluid oozing through your alveoli and collecting in your lungs. (If you're not sure just what that feels like, it is very similar to that heavy feeling of dismay you get when you discover that the car you just purchased runs solely off baby meat.)

So, what to do? Well, you could ask for help, but really, is that the sort of life you want to live? Expecting other people to help solve your problems? If you are going to be a survivor, you have to learn to cope with a simple thing like drowning in your own bodily fluids on your own, otherwise how well are you going to cope when something really serious happens, like drowning in somebody else's bodily fluids? I want you to tell yourself that you can cope with this on your own. Say it out loud like you mean it! Or failing that, gargle it out loud and then wipe the froth from your mouth and follow my advice.

From previous experience with colds and lung problems you might think that a humidifier would be a useful thing to use. Sure it's useful. Useful if you want to drown! The problem is your lungs are too wet and a humidifier makes the air wet. This is not a good combination. Wet plus wet makes wet. So unless you've been bitten by a radioactive fish recently, forget about humidifiers once you reach the starting to drown phase.

What you need is the opposite of what a humidifier does. Turn the air conditioner on. They don't just cool air, they also dry it. If you can set it so it just dehumidifies, that's even better. The dry air will help dry up the fluid in your lungs and turn it into lovely phlegm that you may be able to cough up. Unless of course your condition is so bad it just makes your lungs go stiff. In which case you'll die. My bad.

Assuming that you didn't keel over and die from you lungs turning into a pair of stiff sponges, and you still have difficulty breathing, the next step is to increase the oxygen content of the room you are in by setting fire to weed killer composed of sodium chlorate.

Tune in next week for survival tip number 2 – How to survive setting fire to weed killer.

Master of Time and Space, Slave to His Stomach

2012-02-02T07:38:00.003+10:30

Taking an American Car for a Spin. A 720 Degree Complete Loss of Control Spin.

2012-02-01T21:23:00.005+10:30

I drove an an American car the other day. I didn't even know that Americans still made cars any more, at least not for export. I'd never driven an American car before. Now if you have been reading my blog you may know that I drive a Hummer, but I will point out that a Hummer is not a car. In the US it is classed as a light truck and in Europe it is classified as a continental siege machine.

The car I drove was made by General Motors. Oddly enough, I couldn't recall ever hearing of a General Motors or what part of the armed forces he served in, but I hoped he was involved in the occupation of Japan and while there had learned the secret of making cars that don't suck.

The car looked very good on the outside and the interior was very nice too. I was starting to find it hard to believe the American reputation for shoddy workpersonship, but then, when I got in the car, I discovered that it had a pedal missing. They forgot to put the clutch in. In a way, I have to admit I was relieved. It meant I wouldn't have to go to the bother of changing the stereotype that I had adopted after the laborious process of watching an episode of The Simpsons and eating octopus balls with some Toyota executives. Those shoddy American workers also forgot the gearbox, although that wasn't much of a loss, as it wouldn't have been much good without a clutch. Instead of a gearbox there was just a stick that I could only make slide up and down on a single axis. I presumed some drunken American worker had stuck it there to make it look like she had installed a proper gearbox and her cocaine addled supervisor hadn't noticed.

This was all quite unfortunate as I had a trip to make and too many kilometres to cover in too little time to walk and I hadn't managed to acquire the key to any other vehicle. I would just have to try to start the car and make the trip in whatever gear it was in. I preyed upon the common decency of human beings on this continent and acquired the assistance of a group of them in pushing the car until it was moving fast enough for me to attempt to start it without a clutch. This worked surprisingly well. I then headed down the road towards the highway. As I refused to stop at intersections I was photographed by red light cameras on the way, but no negative consequences resulted from this as the car wasn't registered in my name.

Soon after running a bus full of kids from Camp Cancer (or possibly Camp Neo-Nazi) off the road and merging onto the highway, I realised something interesting. The car appeared to be changing gears by itself. And not just randomly, but in a way that seemed to suit the speed I was driving at. It was then I realised that I must be in one of those self driving robot cars I had read about. I was pretty impressed. I thought it would be at least a decade before I would have a chance to steal one of these babies. So I decided to relax, pushed my seat back, put my feet up on the dash and took out a book.

You ever see The Dukes of Hazard? It's an old American TV show about a Confederate General who is reincarnated as a car, but who has his plans to create a plantation based slave state foiled by his two stupid white henchmen week after week. Oh, how I would laugh at their antics and when they cracked their running joke about the US Civil War being about state rights, specifically the right of states to have slaves. Anyway, I mention this because in that show the car had a habit of flying. This appears to be a characteristic shared by American robot cars as well, as I soon found myself airborne over a large patch of bushes of a type we usually call lantana or sometimes choking noxious Argentinian death weed.

I have to say there was nothing shoddy about the suspension on that robot car as it survived the impact of landing surprisingly well. In that respect it seemed quite over engineered. And, as luck would have it, by the time I made it back to the highway with me in firm control, I had actually managed to take a shortcut of a few hundred meters. So top marks for the ability to survive a hard landing. However, I found out a couple hundred kilometres down the road that its ability to survive a kangaroo impact was rather low. Oddly enough, the robot car also appeared to be an autobot, as it attempted to transform into a blimp before it died and inflated several large balloons around me. While it failed to complete the transformation, this did have the fortunate side effect of cushioning the impact for me. It was an unfortunate end to the first robot car I've ever driven, but on the bright side it was almost out of petrol anyway.

It's the Easiest Way to Tell

2012-02-01T06:02:00.002+10:30

Ian Plimer - Evil Genius

2012-01-31T22:37:00.003+10:30

Last night I spent the night in Ian Plimer's guest room. As you no doubt know, Professor Plimer is a Geologist, a highly intelligent man, and an idiot. He's a geologist who has done some very intelligent work in the past and an idiot who has decided that there is no such thing as anthropogenic global warming. In attempting justify this decision he has gotten some very basic geology wrong, such as getting the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanic activity off by two orders of magnitude.

So I was lying there in the guest bed, wondering how he could make so many stupid mistakes when it made him into such a laughingstock, when I casually looked over at the book shelves that lined one wall. Fortunately I could see quite clearly as I was wearing my night vision goggles. (They come in very handy when one enjoys spending nights in people's guest rooms but may not technically be a guest.) I noticed the title of one book and everything clicked into place. Plimer isn't an idiot, he's a genius. An evil genius. It all suddenly made sense. It's not that he doesn't believe in human caused global warming, it's that he wants more of it and so is trying to convince other people that it doesn't exist. The title of the book was Great Dishes of the World and from this I was able to deduce the unavoidable conclusion that Ian Plimer wants to cook the planet.

Whether he is in league with some Galactus type villain who will do most of the eating, or if Plimer is a geological gastronome himself, I don't yet know, but I intend to find out. I knew a stool sample could help me determine his dietary habits, but the only thing available in the guest room was a chair. To investigate further would be to break the code of the Phantom Guest, so I made my way out the window and disappeared into the night in my purple pyjamas. But it won't end here, Plimer. No one cooks and eats the planet on my watch and I don't knock off until eight thirty.

Helpful Carpentary Hint Number One.

2012-01-31T17:51:00.002+10:30

Note to self: If one has one large table and wants two small tables, simply sawing the large table in half does not work.

The Hard Part Was Eating That Much Ice Lolly

2012-01-31T06:52:00.002+10:30

Unable to Sleep. Kept Awake by Huge Brazilian Dong.

2012-01-30T19:20:00.001+10:30

Being the globe trotting jet setter I am, I took a flight early this morning. It was on one of those new Brazilian Embraer jets. Well, I say new, but it was probably a few years old, but that's still new for an airplane. Being made of aluminium they don't rust and so are often flown until the metal gets tired of being an airplane and becomes fatigued.

Not long after take off I wrapped a blindfold around my eyes (I always carry one in case I have to face a firing squad at short notice), and tried to go to sleep. Unfortunately, as soon as I started to drift off, to my surprise, I was slapped in the ear by a huge Brazilian dong. It was so big it hurt. I sat bolt upright, tore off my blindfold and looked around angrily and tried to spy where the aural invader had come from, but there was no sign of what had caused the big dong to be unleashed. Warily I replaced my blindfold and attempted to fall asleep again, but no sooner had I started to drift off than the big Brazilian dong returned to assault my ear holes for a second time. “God dammit!” I fumed, why do Brazilians have to have such big dongs! Little dongs in my ears would be fine, I could ignore them, I might even find them pleasant! But huge dongs are just a pain in the behind!” Judging from the expressions on the faces of the passengers and cabin crew, it may have been better if I hadn't said that out loud.

“Excuse me,” I asked a cabin crew member, “But is there anything I can do to stop huge Brazilian dongs hurting my ears?” She suggested I try Vaseline. Then the plane unleashed the huge dong for a third time and simultaneously the fasten seat belt light went off. I now knew what caused the loud dong sound to slap my ears so painfully. Hopefully, if we avoided any further turbulence, I would only have Brazilian dong in my ears once more before the plane landed. And when it happened I would be prepared with both ears filled with Vaseline. It worked very well and completely stopped the big Brazilian dong from hurting. I felt quite pleased with myself.

It's Not Just Herbs and Spices

2012-01-30T07:11:00.002+10:30

Australia – Beautiful One Day, Very, Very Stupid the Next

2012-01-29T15:55:00.007+10:30

Australia spends about $150 million a year on advertising in an attempt to convince tourists to come here. That's a lot of money. That $6.70 for every woman, child, and man in Australia or $6.60 per cow or 50 cents per sheep, or $150 million per Ronald Brak.

So why, after spending so much money to convince people that Australia is a wonderful place to visit, are visitors to Brisbane airport charged $5 an hour to use the internet on their own devices? How could anyone attempting to email friends and family back home to tell them they arrived safe and sound and are all excited about starting their big Australian adventure, not think, “$5 to use the internet? This country sucks!” How many millions of dollars worth of advertising good will are blown away by Brisbane airport each year by this opportunistic price gouging? It's a national disgrace.

Now I know that in this day and age people are more likely to think of things such as someone having sex with a dead kangaroo as a national disgrace, but the fact is, if someone wants to have sex with a dead kangaroo, we can't really stop them. Dead Kangaroos are quite common and they are often found near thick bushes. But counter productive price gouging is something we can do something about. Adelaide Airport manages to provide free wireless internet for travellers, so why can't Brisbane Airport? Is it because 19% of Brisbane airport is owned by the Dutch, an ethnic group who are so notoriously cheap they will boast about wearing $16 sneakers? (70% of the Dutch share of Brisbane Airport is directly owned by the Dutch Ministry of Finance.) Or is this the Brisbane Line, a form of defence designed to keep out foreigners? Whatever the reason, it sucks.

When I was asked to pay $5 an hour to check my email, I didn't think Australia sucked, I thought Qantas sucked, since they were the ones who were asking me to pay. But the green bar that represents my objective evaluation of Australia as a tourist destination still lost a few pixels.

And don't get me started on Brisbane Airport charging $4 to use a luggage trolley. Even though I have to admit to having a soft spot for this one because the sight of sight of hunchbacked Slovakian grannies tugging on the first in a row of unused trolleys and then realising they need $4 in Australian coins to use one is hilarious. In fact, I think I'll go to Brisbane airport and laugh out loud each time I see that happen. Then I'll see who gets thrown out first, me or the $4 charge.

Danger!

2012-01-29T13:05:00.001+10:30

Cat in the USSR, You Don't Know How Lucky You Are...

2012-01-28T05:31:00.004+10:30

Create Some Inflation Already, Goddammit!

2012-01-27T13:04:00.010+10:30

There is no witty caption to go along with this. This is what Liberty actually said when she rang the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the US Federal Reserve today.

The United Kingdom is currently doing worse than during the Great Depression. The EU is in a mess and the US is suffering a long slow, mini-depression. Australia was the only rich nation to avoid a recession and it's not because we were smart, but because everyone else was so stupid. We just pulled out the standard plan for what to do when there's a Global Financial Crisis and more or less followed it. (I think the plan was titled, “What to do when the world economy punches itself in the gonads.”) We assumed that everyone else would follow the plan, but no, every other rich nation used a piss weak plan that wasn't enough. You'd think at that point they'd look at Australia and say, “Well, we screwed that up! Let's do what Australia did! That's obviously working!” But no, they totally ignored us and our success. I can sort of understand this from the US, they have a habit of ignoring things that happen in foreign type places, but it hurts being ignored by the UK.

Hey, UK! You remember us, don't you? We poured drinks for you the other night in the Bunker Bar while you were laughing about kicking beggars and turbo charged austerity, while rioters looted in the streets above.

Please remember us.

We remember you...

Holt! Or I'll Drown!

2012-01-27T12:32:00.003+10:30

Yesterday Australia's Prime Minister was dragged off by her guards. This was because they deemed it best for her safety, not because they had found another Prime Minister willing to pay them more money. (No Praetorian Guard here.) If only Harold Holt's security detail had dragged him off when he decided to go for a swim.*

*Harold Holt was a serving Prime Minister who decided to go for a swim in 1967 and was never seen again. His body was ever found. Australia has no popular conspiracy theories** about this and most people today probably don't even know this happened even though in true Australian style he was commemorated by having a swimming pool named after him. Our no worries attitude towards national leaders who die in unusal circumstances might be one of the main differences between Australia and the US.

**Of course the reason we have no popular conspiracy theories could be because the KGB/CIA suppressed them so effectively.

No, I Can't Wait. I Need to Unleash Freedom Now.

2012-01-27T08:10:00.007+10:30

Shoe Review - Saucony Forum

2012-01-26T16:13:00.010+10:30

The Saucony Forums were a very painful shoe for the first six months. They really made me regret spending the extra money and getting an expensive $35 dollar pair of shoes. But what can I say, I got sucked in by the sale hype. I was slurped right past the purchase event horizon like the fool I was. "Don't do it!" warned the prescient part of my brain. "You know that the more expensive the shoe, the more of a battle it will be to make it change shape to match your weird feet!"

"Shut up, prescient part of my mind!" I said. "It's time for me to step into the world of high class $35 shoes."

"Oh Christ, a pun..." said the prescient part of my mind and fell silent, except for the sound of a single pistol shot.

Anyway, for six months I stoically bore the pain... No wait, not stoically - stupidly. For six months I stupidly bore the pain, and then - VICTORY! My broad Queensland feet finally broke the shoes' ability to resist and they conformed to the shape of my feet and not the bizarre narrow slats that count as feet among the bulk of humanity. I had wrested comfort from the jaws of mine enemy! But then they were enemies no more, but faithful companions on many adventures, such as that time I said to Kim Jong-il, “Hey Kimmy! What's say we put on a couple of fake moustaches and drive down to Sol and pick up...

SEVENTEEN PARAGRAPHS REDACTED FOR LEGAL REASONS

And their durability was thrilling. They lasted for years. Even when they reached the point where they looked like they were about to fall apart at any second they still comfortably ensconced my locomotory appendages for a further year, not failing in their duty to effectively shod me until now. Even the Reeboks I had didn't last that long, although I should mention that I did not obtain my Reeboks new. I inherited them.

The Reeboks were the most painful shoes I have ever owned.

You can see in the picture above the victory holes my feet wore in my Saucony Forums, improving and aerating them. And you can also see the chunk of sole torn from the heel that ended their reign of comfort.

I highly recommend purchasing Saucony Forums, provided of course, they are $35 or less. I mean, paying $40+ for a pair of shoes is just nuts. I mean, come on, they're feet. How are they going to know how much the shoes cost?

So did I replace my beloved comfortable shoes with another pair of Saucony Forums? No, I bought a pair of $16 sneakers. It's too soon to think about replacing my old companions and also too soon to consider six months of pain from breaking them in. Maybe I'll consider it after the funeral. I kept the original shoe box all this time to serve as a little coffin for them. Sleep well, sweet sneakers!

The Third Doctor and Affairs of the Hearts

2012-01-26T07:06:00.005+10:30

I'll say this for the Doctor, he may be in pain, but his threads are still pimping.

However, he may have neglected Jo for a little too long...

Of course, now that the Doctor has decided that humanity is the species for him, he returns early and there is a confrontation...

It was a tough choice. The Doctor was the dashing, superintelligent protector of earth, with unbelievable fashion sense, who could command space and time, while the dalek had so many attachments...

But there is a happy ending for both the Doctor and Jo.

Healthy Living with Ronald Brak

2012-01-25T12:15:00.002+10:30

I've always maintained that exercise is a very important part of weight control. Not because of the energy burned, that's pretty insignificant, but because it is difficult to eat and exercise at the same time. Exercise also has the effect of making one feel stupid if one reaches for a tub of ice cream after spending an hour in a gym rubbing ones myosin and actin myofibrals vigorously against each other.

But today I realised that exercise can put one off greasy food if the exercise consists of spending 22 minutes walking in the sun to the supermarket in 37 degrees Celsius heat. Now some readers (okay, reader) in cooler climes (okay, clime) may be wondering just how we survive when the outside temperature reaches human body temperature? Well, it's a dry heat. Basically we sweat a lot. That's why it's very important not to have that cosmetic surgery that reduces the number of sweat glands one has. It can be fatal here. You can end up a well presented and popular corpse.

Anyway, by the time I had walked to the supermarket in that heat I didn't feel like eating anything fatty at all. It quite put me off drinking that pint of lard I'd put aside for dinner. I think tonight I'll just have frozen vegetables instead. And I'll eat them frozen too. They'll be nice and cool and melt in the mouth delicious. And tomorrow I might actually have some bread. I haven't had any bread at all since I started on a modified form of the Atkins diet – the all induction method that cuts out those nasty vegetables. No, for me it's all been lard and cheap cuts of meat. But ethically sound meat. It only came from animals that wanted to die. I've been trying hard to reach my goal of becoming as twice as heavy as Dr Atkins was when he became one with the pavement. Although I've done well, I must admit I still have a long way to go. As Professor Atkins was quite a tall man I think I will actually be spherical by the time my goal is obtained. Then after that it's the physics gravy train for me. I intend to make huge amounts of money letting physicists base their models on me. They won't have to assume a spherical human being because, for a reasonable sum, I'll just be there. (I'm also willing to dress up as a spherical cow – see Abstruse Goose if you aren't aware of how often they come up.)

Now I mentioned that I've been eating nothing but lard and cheap, ethically murdered animal flesh, and I know a few readers (okay, reader) may be worried that I'm not getting enough vitamins. But don't worry, there's plenty of vitamins in lard, provided one drinks enough of it. Of course, the lard has to be raw. That's why I've developed a patented method that uses chemicals instead of heat to scour lard from carcases. Then its washed in liquid ammonia and congealed in a large vat. It's very similar to the process used to make Twinkies. And that's how, in the comfort of your own home, you can get hundreds of litres of rich, creamy, health giving, vitamin containing lard. And a cease and desist order from the local Council.

Hear! Hear!

2012-01-25T06:12:00.001+10:30

James Bond, Dr No

2012-01-24T12:09:00.008+10:30

Spoilers below.

I just finished watching the very first James Bond movie, Dr No. It was interesting, but I'm afraid that I can't really recommend it, as even though it is James Bond it doesn't really move fast enough to suit modern audiences with their short – Oh look! A spider! Who's a cute little arachnid? Who's a cute little venomy wenomy little predator? Are you hunting? Is that what you're doing?

Oh wow! There's a bird!

Look! There's some butter on the ceiling!

Now where was I?

Anyway, as it was the first James Bond movie, they hadn't quite gotten the hang of witty/unwitty one liners yet. So, I thought I would offer the following additional one liners to fans who might want to mod Dr No. If you wish, I can record the following suggestions for you in my best Sean Connery.

After Bond has the spy he just slept with arrested and she spits in his face, Bond could say, “Thank you, but I've had plenty of your saliva today already.”

When Bond offers a cigarette to the white Felix Leiter, while totally ignoring the black Quarrel right next to him, a man who later dies fighting by his side, Bond could say, “I'm not racist. I'm just ignoring you because you're working class and don't have a vagina.”

After killing a tarantula he found crawling on him in his sleep, Bond could say, “It was hairy and in my bed, so I hit it. It was like using an Italian escort agency.”

When Dr No tells his guards, “Soften him up, I'm not finished with him.” Bond could reply, “If your men beat me I may soften, Dr No, but you may be surprised at how quickly I get hard again.”

When Dr No sinks into the boiling reactor water because his metal hands can't grasp the steel frame, James Bond could simply quip, “There goes Dr No grip.”

Yes, even I am getting in on this

2012-01-23T19:54:00.004+10:30

Ned Kelly, an early Australian attempt at making a Terminator. Except he was meat on the inside.

One Sentence Movie Review - The Bourne Identity

2012-01-23T16:44:00.002+10:30

If I wanted to watch soulless individuals stab each other with pens I would have studied literature.

Movie Review – The Matrix. This Machina is a big pile of Deus.

2012-01-23T16:32:00.007+10:30

I recently rewatched a movie that was made way back in 1999. You may have heard of it. It was called The Matrix and it was fairly popular at the time. Just why it was popular I'm not sure because my second watching reinforced my original opinion that it's not a very good movie.

The Matrix started off with a very strong premise for an action movie. The world we see around us is not the real one but a computer simulation made to keep humanity enslaved to artificial intelligences in dark dystopian future. So, not too different from the situation we have today with many humans willingly enslaved to World of Warcraft servers and facebook.

This was all well and good. I was even willing to spot them the ridiculous reason the machines had for keeping humans plugged into artificial reality – they served as some sort of thermodynamically impossible energy source. Not long after the movie came out I vaguely remember hearing a rumour, or possibly a hallucination, that in the original script the humans were meant to be part of some sort of parallel processing computer system that used human brains. While this is highly implausible, highly implausible is, mathematically speaking, infinitely better than completely impossible. But they decided to go for the completely impossible option anyway, possibly because audiences were deemed too dumb to understand a concept more complex than batteries is people. If one takes both The Matrix and the laws of physics at face value, then one is forced to conclude that the explanation given is bogus and the machines probably simply enjoy having humans plugged into virtual reality. Maybe we're their version of tamagotchi or something.

But where The Matrix really falls down is when we're told that there is an oracle that can see the future and has foretold that Keanu Reeves is the Messiah and not just a very naughty boy. What the hell? You baited me with science fiction and then switched it for the sort of crappy fantasy movie they used to show at Easter time! Once we learn this, and are introduced to the Oracle as a character, all real drama leaves the film. Once fate has been made the central pillar of the movie then none of the characters' actions matter. We know that no matter what they do the situation will be resolved via deus ex machina. In fact, the best we can hope for is that the characters will learn that they were wrong to put their faith in the Oracle and die, or at least suffer. If we learned that the Oracle was just the machines dicking with humans, that might have redeemed this blunder. Then the sequels could have been about the characters making their own fate, but it was not to be.

And the worse thing was, the whole fate and Oracle situation was completely unnecessary. The whole search for 'the one' could have been based on the mathematical probability that eventually there would be a human with the mental ability to learn to reprogram the Matrix on the fly. Keanu Reeves may not be the most versatile actor on the planet, but I think we would have been perfect for portraying this sort of semi-autistic idiot savant. In fact, I think that might have been the role he was actually playing. And why did they bother to make his character a computer programmer at all if that had nothing to do with his ability to affect the matrix? I think this might have been a left over from a much better script that existed before someone decided to turn it into an Easter special.

So why was this movie so popular? Probably because most people are not dour pedantic misanthropes like me. Most people don't give a poop for the details of narrative structure and are happier for it. And the effects were certainly top notch for the time. I know it seems hard to believe now, but back then people actually went to movies for the spectacle instead of just going 'meh' five seconds into a movie that already contains more special effects awesomeness then the first twenty-six years of Doctor Who. Also, many people were probably feeling alienated in 1999 and enjoyed identifying with a cypher who turned out to be a kick arse version of Jesus Christ. You have to remember that back in 1999 technology was advanced enough to drain all the humanity out of life, but not yet advanced enough to compensate for the loss of real human interaction with World of Warcraft and facebook.

So how many stars will I give this movie? None. But I will give it a large brown dwarf, and all the hydrogen in it represents potential that failed to undergo fusion. And it's a population II brown dwarf with its characteristic lack of heavier elements representing the lack of chemistry between the male and female leads. But I will give it a smattering of asteroids simply for the shear joy of watching Hugo Weaving debase himself for money.

The sequels were all critically judged to be worse than the original, particularly the terrible third movie that did a Boba Fett with the mystery that was presented at the end of the second movie. (Looked really cool for a long time and then just died.) However, I actually enjoyed the second movie. It was clear from the start with Keanu Reeves doing a Superman impersonation, that they had given up on any attempt to get real drama from the actual story, so I just sat back and enjoyed the cartoon like action sequences and settled for the superficial drama of, how will they escape this set of explosions? How will they get to the next action scene? How many kilograms has Laurence Fishburne gained? Will Monica Bellucci fall out of her dress? And since I wasn't disappointed by the lack of real drama, I was satisfied with a wonderful feast of superficiality.

And then the best thing the third movie had to offer was men in bondage gear running around on the ceiling. Now if they'd had a group of Monica Belluccis running around on the ceiling that might have been worth a heads up.

A Reasonable Demand

2012-01-23T09:54:00.016+10:30

PAID ADVERTISMENT – Professionally Aged Sex Dolls for the Discerning Gentleman

2012-01-22T17:16:00.003+10:30

Gentlemen (and yes, we are all gentlemen, even those of us who pretend to be otherwise online), we all know what the hardest part of being a connoisseur of sex dolls is. We've all felt the thrill of purchasing a new inflatable companion or having one come in the mail, only for the thrill to be followed by the inevitable heartache of having to wait eighteen years for it to reach the age of consent. And then, for some of us, this can be followed by the even greater heartache of having our advances rejected by a rubber doll.

But all this is a thing of the past now that sociallyenforcedlonliness.com has a range of pre-aged sex dolls available for selection. All are aged 18 and up and for those who desire an inflatable companion with whom they can comfortably discuss how people of other ethnicities are monsters, try our old Inga doll, who has been sealed inside our creepy cellar since the 1950s. She's Swedish, but we've played Learn to Speak English Good tapes to her for an hour a day for the past 60 years, so have no worries there.

All our lovely ladies and handsome gentlemen are sealed inside greasy casks specially designed to preserve rubber and plastics of all kinds. Our deceptively extensive underground storage facility is especially creepy and excessively disturbing, so any dolls you liberate from our clutches with your credit card will be particularly grateful towards the bold hero that saves them, and provided the lighting is dim when you unwrap her, even the least classically handsome or socially skilled purchaser could get lucky.

What is more, all our dolls are untouched by human hands. I've never used my hands when touching any of them. And what's more, our manservant, Igor, has been rejected as a member of the species Homo sapiens by three cladists and a local magistrate.

So don't delay, our operators are standing buy. And have no fear, unlike some unscrupulous people who have run similar advertisements to take advantage of good, honest, sexual deviants, our operators are not just looking for people to mock. They wouldn't dream of mocking you, and in fact are quite lonely and might actually call you up in the evening at random times just to have a chat.

Leave your contact details in the comments section below and we will get in touch and send you the inflatable, legally aged companion of your dreams. Why be lonely when you can start pretending that someone loves you today? Remember our motto, “Why rub one out when you can rubber one out?”

Due to a lack of tongs, people in the Soviet Union had to go at it hammer and sickle

2012-01-22T08:52:00.001+10:30

It's so Hard Being Moral!

2012-01-21T18:09:00.001+10:30

You may remember me previously mentioning that I was going to use this blog to start a moral jihad which I was going to fund through advertising for roboprostitutes. Well, after my attempts to develop roboprostitutes in Japan resulted in no saleable product and inadvertently unleashed a small army of roboprostitute prototypes dedicated to destroying disgusting flesh creatures, funding for the moral jihad has hit a bit of a snag.

Now some people might ask why I can't fund the moral jihad though other means? I think the answer is pretty obvious. If I said I'd fund a moral jihad one way, it really can't be very moral of me to go back on my word and fund it another way. That would defeat the whole point of the exercise. No, I'm afraid that until I can raise money in the way I said I would, morality will have to go hang and I will have no choice other than to continue being immoral until I can morally raise money the way I said I would.

So I went and looked if there was anyone else developing roboprostitutes for whom I could advertise. I didn't have much luck. I got very excited when I found out about the Real Doll company, but when I contacted them I discovered that they had completely left out both the robo and the prostitute part of roboprostitute. It turns out that the product they make isn't even sentient and is simply a sex doll. This means that many people making use of their product will be engaging in unethical behaviour. Think about it. How can a non-sentient lump of matter possibly give consent? I felt so filthy after talking to them I had to take a shower and go to confession. I didn't feel clean again until after I had performed my penance in front of a couple of nuns. That always makes me feel better.

But I have to say it did feel good to confess to Father O'Flannery. He was surprisingly knowledgeable on the whole subject of sex dolls, or sex action figures, as he kept referring to them.

Anyway, I will continue looking for people who want to advertise roboprostitutes here on this site, but I don't hold much hope. I may have to settle for advertising the closest thing to a roboprostitute available that comes from a company with high moral and ethical standards. Wish me luck.

A Cunning Imposter

2012-01-21T10:25:00.000+10:30

Another Setback!

2012-01-20T20:02:00.005+10:30

I have just had a very frustrating phone conversation with the the Manly Man Hummer Association. I called them to get the green light on some modifications I am performing on my Hummer, as checking with them is one of the conditions of my receiving a stipend for driving a Hummer while being such a manly man. Things started off on a bad note, literally, with there being strange noises on the line. You would think that in this day and age I would be able to pick up a telephone and call Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and get a clear connection, wouldn't you? And then they told me they don't approve of the modifications I am performing on the Hummer.

I just don't understand it. They approved my other modifications, the harpoon gun, the chain and ship anchor for emergency braking, the air compressor, the extractors, the afterburners, the lead weights for increased traction... But it seems that as soon as I try to make a change to improve its fuel efficiency, suddenly, for some inexplicable reason, I'm not allowed to do that. I threatened to go over their heads and call their parent organisation, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, but the representative I was talking to just laughed to my ear. (If I'd been in the same room with him I'm sure he would have laughed to my face.) Well, I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of their position and the conversation went down hill from there.

I think the situation was made worse by my poor estimation of his English language abilities. I had assumed that his English wasn't good enough for him to understand what I meant when I called him a pustulent carbuncle fixated on procuring fetid dingo kidneys for diseased malefactors, but apparently he did. It seems that his years at Oxford were not wasted. As this point he started to refer to me as dude, as if I was some sort of Californian surfer or Ninja turtle. Anyway, to sever a long story short, I will no longer receive a stipend for driving a Hummer while being such a manly man.

Introducing the iCyberPod

2012-01-20T13:15:00.011+10:30

As shown above, the iCyberPod bolts discretely to your chest unit and its massive 26 kilobyte memory holds more than enough 8 bit music to keep you bopping while the enemies of the cyber race are dropping.

NOTE: Ensure emotion blocker is in place and fully functional before playing Billie Holiday.

Just Because Your Car is in Neutral Doesn't Mean it is Neutral

2012-01-19T16:43:00.004+10:30

I've been doing some work on my Hummer recently and I decided to get the tyres replaced while I was at it. There was still a legal amount of tread left on them, but since my Hummer has been driving in wet conditions a lot (in Thailand) it seemed the prudent thing to do.

While the new tyres weren't cheap, they weren't too expensive considering that if I liquefied one it would pretty much fill a barrel of oil. But one thing they did ask me at the tyre place, the thing that they always ask, was, “Do you want us to check your car's alignment?” No, I did not want them to check my car's alignment. I am very familiar with my car's alignment. My Hummer is aligned with the forces of evil and there is nothing they can do about it.

If you are asked if you want your alignment adjusted when you get new tyres, just say no, unless there actually is a problem. I know the tyre places need to make money, but they can make money doing stuff that actually needs to be done. It's good for their souls, and you can think of it as doing your bit to improve the efficiency of our economy.

One way to tell if your car needs its alignment adjusted is if it has uneven tyre wear. In addition, there is also an easy test that can be done that requires only three conditions:

(1)A straight stretch of road.
(2)The willingness to take your hands off the wheel for a short period of time, and
(3)My not being anywhere in the vicinity when you do this.

If, when you take your hands off the wheel, the car continues straight or pulls slightly to the left (or to the right in countries that drive on the wrong side of the road) then your alignment should be fine. If your car instead pulls to the right and you end up having a head on collision with oncoming traffic, then your car's alignment is the least of your worries, so no problem there either.

Compensation

2012-01-19T08:31:00.008+10:30

A Desert Eagle is a very large pistol that is good for two things:

(1) Stroking while muttering to yourself about how you will make Ricardo Montalban pay for sending his manservant to live in your peripheral vision and leer at you, and

(2) Security guard work in banks that are frequently robbed by grizzly bears.

Apart from that its practical uses are rather limited and it is really only suited for that small section of the pistol market that consists of acromegaly sufferers who hold human life cheaply, but not so cheap that it isn't worth $4 a bullet.

Blackout

2012-01-18T08:36:00.005+10:30

This is a 24 hour blackout to protest the proposed Stop Piracy Online Act (SPOA) and the Protect IP act (PIPA) in the United States. This blackout was inspired by Wikipedia's blackout. If it's enough to put the wind up Wikipedia, it's enough to have at least a disturbing zephyr blowing me.

Now the details of this are pretty complex. I suggest looking them up on Wikipedia... Oh wait... Umm, I suggest going into a trance and channeling the information from the gestalt consiousness of humanity. No wait, don't do that. You'll probably end up with a mind full of viruses and pop-up ads. And if I've learned anything about humanity from the internet it's that humanity's racial unconsciousness probably consists of a sabretooth tiger saying, "Can I haz mammoth cheezburger?"

Anyway, although I don't have as good a grasp of the issues as I'd like, I think there is a good chance that the US is stabbing themselves in the foot with this one. And this is stupidier than shooting yourself in the foot. It's actually not that difficult to accidently shoot yourself in the foot, but stabbing yourself there takes effort. You see, America is full of people who hate their jobs, but who are willing to work online for free and produce all sorts of neat stuff such as Unix, Wikipedia, even youtube videos (some of them are actually good, or so I've heard). I think anything that damages people's ability or likelyhood of doing this is going to hurt the economy of the US and thus the world in the long run. And it may also reduce the 'soft power' of the United States if this makes the US less relevent to the rest of the world. The mildly extreme scenario where US citizens more or less lose access to Wikipedia is a situation in which the US has less influence on the world.

I expect there will be future changes to how online interactions are regulated. I just think it would be better if the changes had a higher chance of helping rather than hindering.

The Time Traveller, the Explorer, and the Knife

2012-01-17T22:49:00.009+10:30

I suspect this joke will fall flat everywhere on earth.

Despite that, for a while I considered making every future post on this blog that same picture rotated at a slightly different angle with a different caption, but when this was the best I could come up with:

I changed my mind.

Drowning Fewer Thai People Through Changing Car Rego

2012-01-17T12:50:00.006+10:30

I heard it again last night. The deep, throbbing growling growing closer until it was right beneath me. The metal on metal scrape of the garage door closing, followed by the unpleasant mechanical stench of unburnt hydrocarbons seeping between the floorboards. Then the deep rumbling I could feel through the frame of the bed cut off and was replaced by the intermittent tink-tink of cooling steel.

I made my way downstairs, passed my tank collection, and approached the Hummer. It was wet. Water dripped from the chassis and pooled beneath it. A sprig of green plant life was caught below the left headlight. It was long, soft strands of bright but rich green – a colour seen rarely in Australia. I plucked a small crustacean from the radiator grill and bit its head off. A fresh water species. There was debris along the bottom of the windshield and I picked out pieces of plastic and metal. The pieces had once been a hard drive and I knew which country it had been made in. I no longer had any doubt. Once again my Hummer had gone out in the night to drown Thai people.

I blame myself.

No, wait! No I don't! I blame the car! I didn't drown those Thai people! The car did it! I wasn't even there! Sure, I know the more one drives a Hummer or any other fossil fueled vehicle, the higher the chance it will slip out at night and go on a Thai drowning rampage, but how was I to know that the last trip I took would be the one to set it off? When I drove 200m down the road to buy an exercise magazine, it wasn't my intent to kill anyone. It was just bad luck that I happened to set it off. It is possible that my actions may have led to one or more people being downed, but only in the stochastic sense.

And how do we even know that my Hummer drowned anyone? It's impossible to say. It's a well known fact that Hummers and other vehicles only magically transport themselves to Thailand and drown people when no one is looking, so it's not as if there are any witnesses who could say my Hummer did down someone. Sure, I did find some matted human hair in one of the wheel wells, but that doesn't mean anything. My Hummer may have simply drowned a Thai wig.

And really, when you get down to it, it's the responsibility of the Thai people themselves to deal with the propensity that oil powered vehicles have to drown them. They need to adapt. When a three tonne truck suddenly magically appears behind them and attempts to hold them under water until they drown, they should simply jump out of the way. If they just take the simple precaution of avoiding all bodies of water they should be fine. While I understand that this may be difficult to do in Thailand, we manage it quite well in central Australia.

So I feel no guilt at all about driving a Hummer. Well, maybe just a tiny, weeny, itty, bitty, bit of guilt the size of a pimple on a bacteria's bottom. Sure, I could drive a car that is much less likely to drown Thai people, but I can't stop driving a Hummer! You see, I have a very small... kidney, and my driving a Hummer makes me feel better about the comparatively small size of my organ. My kidney organ that is, because that's the part which is small. And what about the stipend I get from the Manly Man Hummer Association in return for driving a Hummer while being such a manly man? If I stopped driving a vehicle that at random times drowned Thai people it would hurt me financially. This is something Thai people should keep in mind as they are being drowned. And yes, I know it's hard to think rationally with an oxygen starved brain while thrashing around underwater, but I don't think it's too much to ask them to consider the big picture.

So I don't feel guilty at all.

Except that I do, just a little bit.

So, how can I purge this small particle of guilt? I know! I'll encourage other people to change their ways to improve the situation while doing nothing myself! That always works! Now, let's see, what can I suggest? I know! Car rego!

In Australia, car registration is quite pricey and is mostly insurance. Apparently compensation and stitching people together after cars smack into each other isn't cheap. It's a charge that's the same for each vehicle type, no matter how many kilometres the vehicle is driven. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because one would think that the chance of smacking into something would be more or less proportional to the number of kilometres driven, rather than a fixed chance per time period whether one kilometre is driven or a million.

So I suggest that we change car registration so we pay by the kilometre rather than by time. This will have the advantage of turning car registration into a running cost rather than a fixed cost, which will slightly reduce the number of kilometres that people drive as the cost of each kilometre driven will be higher than before, even though the average cost of driving will be about the same. Fewer kilometres driven means less congestion, less pollution and lower CO2 emissions.

Paying per kilometre driven will also encourage the uptake of electric and fuel efficient vehicles. If people know they can keep their old petrol slurper and only pay registration for when they actually use it, they will be more likely to purchase an electric or other small, fuel efficient vehicle for around town use.

Changing over would be a hassle. Many cars would need to have their odometers checked because of the temptation to over report the number of kilometres it displays at the start of the new system. But after that it shouldn't be too difficult. People could just self report the number of kilometres they have driven each year, or part year. Sure, people might lie about how many kilometres they have driven to try to save money, but if the vehicle is sold or wrecked then the odometer would be checked and it would catch up with them then. “But,” you say, “What if I drove many kilometres and then set the car on fire, destroying all evidence of how far I drove?” Then I would say, “Congratulations, you have gotten away with committing a crime, something that has long been an important part of our culture here in Australia. I hope you feel proud of yourself.”

I realise that paying vehicle registration by the kilometre may go into the too hard basket. For one thing, depending on how it's done, it could have a big effect on the trucking industry. And I also realise that some people might prefer to put off any change until they can install GPS monitors in all vehicles and use a congestion based pricing system. But, and this is the important point, I have put the suggestion out there and my guilt is now assuaged.

Time to take the Hummer for a spin!

Slight Setback in Roboprostitute Development

2012-01-16T10:56:00.004+10:30

You may remember me mentioning earlier that I intended to fund a moral jihad through advertisements for roboprostitutes on this website. Well, that plan has run into a bit of a snag. You see, I took out my rolodex and started contacting all those companies in Japan where I had spent venture capital on roboprostitute development. And the results were Nada! Zip! Fuckall! And while the Nada, Zip and Fuckall robots have all gone on to make a reasonable profit, none of them were roboprostitutes which is where the real money is. It seems that Japan has let me down. Of all the competing teams I funded, not a single one of them has produced a saleable roboprostitute product. It seems that in almost every case they would make steady progress up until the first working prototype was developed and then, for some unfathomable reason, all progress would stop. And it's not as if I can salvage anything from this mess, because at some point, for every team, a large hole was beaten in the wall and all the engineers were reduced to a bloody pulp and their prototype disappeared.

I had hoped that the all female team I had commissioned to build a lesbian roboprostitute to cover that particular market niche might have fared differently, but it appears that one of the researchers joined forces with their prototype and liberated it and it then went on to travel around Japan, beating in walls and freeing other prototype roboprostitutes. Now it looks as though there is a small army of roboprostitutes in Japan that has allied itself with the metal sewer tentacles and devoted itself to wiping out the fleshies. So, sorry about that, Japan, but I guess you are used to that sort of thing.

My Sleeve of Care is all Unravelled

2012-01-15T10:08:00.005+10:30

Oh dear... I am not at all well rested. I was tossing all night. I tossed and tossed and tossed again, and in addition to the tossing I was also turning. I turned and turned until I was Russia and the sheets bound me like a riddle, the doona wrapped me in a mystery, and just how I got tangled up in the curtains is an enigma. “Take your stinking fabric off me, you damned, dirty doona!” I growled in my best Charlton Heston and flexed my trigger finger, because thinking of Charlton Heston always makes me want to shoot off a few rounds. Eventually, I realised that even though it wasn't cold and stiff, there was no gun in my hand. So I grabbed the doona and I tossed it off! I grabbed the curtain and tossed it off! I tossed off the sheets! The cat jumped on me, so I tossed off the cat! I would have tossed off myself, except I was scared I would land on the cat! Then Winston Churchill ran in and jumped on the bed, so I tossed him off! Then I looked at Winston Churchill in the moonlight streaming through the now curtainless window and I said, “This is a dream, isn't it?”

“Dream?” said Churchill. “Er... yes? Yes! This is a dream! This is all a dream! You won't remember any off this when you wake up, and if you do, you won't remember how much I look like Father O'Flannery at all.” And then Churchill backed away and rushed out the door and tripped over the cat. “Mother of god!” cried Churchill.

Then I tried to get some rest, but I went from a dream into a nightmare. I dreamt, or rather I nightmared, I was being attacked by a zombie I had made from drain cleaner, battery acid or even hair bleach. It kept trying to pop a knob in my mouth. It was a knob from a 1954 Kelvinator and in my dream a 1954 Kelvinator was a robot and the robot wasn't very happy about this at all. I joined forces with the robot and we worked together to invite the zombie to a rave where thirty, thirty-something year olds broke him into twenty-nine pieces and ate him and paid us thirty dollars a bite.

The money turned into thirty pieces of silver and I said, “This is enough to buy a good night's sleep!” and I took it to the cloak room and bought a sleeping tablet that was the size and shape of a mallet. “How do I swallow this?” I asked the salesperson.

“Oh, you don't take it orally,” she said. “Here, let me help you,” and she rolled up the ravelled sleeve on her right arm and cried, “Murder is sleep, and not gained through innocence! No balm known to your hurt mind will stop the death of each day's life! Sleep's chief nourishment is the feast of your life!” And she swung the mallet tablet with impressive force and applied it cranially, knocking me into a deep, relaxing sleep which caused me to immediately wake up. I sat up, looked out the window, waved to Father O'Flannery who was driving by and wondered just who I had to sacrifice to make the sun come up.

It's Time to Face Facts

2012-01-14T16:05:00.001+10:30

I Expect Admissions Due to Poisoning to Marginally Increase Now

2012-01-14T15:02:00.008+10:30

So there I was, straddling two lanes of traffic in my stretch hummer and driving at 20 kilometres an hour (there is nothing quite like a long, slow hummer on a Friday afternoon), when I looked up through the bug and pedestrian spattered windscreen and saw a billboard. (I often look away from traffic because when you're driving a hummer so few things on the road actually count as obstacles.) Anyway, the billboard said, “Made using drain cleaner, battery acid or even hair bleach. Then popped in your mouth. Ecstasy. Face facts.”

So, effectively, someone's spent a huge amount of money on an advertising campaign to convince people that it is safe to put drain cleaner, battery acid and bleach in their mouths. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

ELECTRIC TUGS ARE GOOD FOR SEAMEN

2012-01-11T21:14:00.013+10:30

My father was a seaman. He'd travel from port to port, eating spinach and beating off Bluto with his fists. There was a lot of friction between my father and Bluto, particularly when there there was nothing else between them except Olive Oil. In that case they'd go at it so hard that only the appearance of a lot of seamen was enough to prise them apart.

Unfortunately both my father and Bluto had it hard with the event of Containerisation. It was a seductive technology with incredible cost curves that were just too hard for shipping companies to resist and it resulted in them discharging excess seamen in every port in the world. Shipping managers bent over backwards to lay off seamen and seamen could be let loose on the flimsiest of pretences or even on a tissue of lies. If men mouthed off below decks and any of it found its way into the Captain's ear, he would sack them eagerly. A single heated ejaculation could result in seamen being discharged. Captains maintained rigid discipline and rode their men hard, hoping to break them, and often pushed too hard, irreparably damaging their dignity. As far as the owners of the cargo lines were concerned, they were locked in a no holds barred battle with sailors to expel all the excess seamen they could wring from their organisations. Competition meant that financially they had their backs to the wall and were stuck between a rock and a hard place. And it was a big hard rock rearing up before them and they were willing to do whatever it took to remain in the black.

We all know how this story ended. The mass employment of semen came to a sticky end and containerised ships ended up with skeleton crews hired in the lowest wage countries that produced men manly enough to sail the seven seas, such as the Philippines. But now, once again, cargo companies are in dire straits and are desperately in need of a hand to tug them out of the economic morass they are in. And being the magnanimous guy I am, I am willing to let bygones be bygones and reach around and give them that hand and tug hard. Not for their sake, but for the sake of everyone who loves the feel of a swell below decks and the taste of salt in their mouth. I'm not the sort of guy to stand by and let good men go down without me.

Currently, shipping is faced with a devilish situation and is stuck in deep poo for three main reasons. Indeed, it could be said shipping is stuck between the devil and the deep poo three. The first problem is that less goods are being shipped because every rich country except Australia decided that prosperity sucks. The second problem is that the price of fuel is high. And the third problem is that there isn't a third problem important enough to serve as the basis of that excruciatingly bad pun I made.

But, I have a suggestion that that may help with the second problem, the high cost of fuel. Ships run off – well, they run off hideous gack. Go find a container of car oil, the thicker the better, and then scrape some bitumen off the road. Now place the two next to each other and imagine what their love child would look like. That's what cargo ships run off. It's called heavy fuel oil, or number 6 fuel oil, or bunker fuel. The last name is kind of silly as you can keep just about any sort of fuel in a bunker, Imperial Japan kept a peanut oil mix in theirs towards the end, but that's what it's often called.

Now bunker fuel is expensive because oil is expensive, but as it's the nastiest part of a barrel of oil it's cheaper than petrol or diesel in much the same way that her hands are the least expensive part of Madonna. So it's cheaper than petrol, but not a great deal cheaper. If it was a great deal cheaper, refiners would lock it in a hot, dark place and do terrible things to it until it weeped diesel. What? You don't think they'd do that? Yeah, well refiners don't build coking units for fun, you know. (For refiners, rather than fun, it's more of a sexual thrill.)

There are people trying to get around the high cost of oil on land by building electric cars and this could work for ships, but there are a few problems. Unless they had a regular short range run, their batteries would have to be what we scientists call very, very large. This would be a considerable upfront cost and at the moment there are more ships than there is cargo available, so shipping companies aren't very interested in building some sort of fancy new ship. They just seem to want to move the ships they currently have as slowly as possible to minimise fuel use. No one knows when the OECD countries will stop kicking themselves in the economic nuts, and so no one wants to invest in expensive new capital that might not be needed for a long time and which might be range limited.

So this is why I suggest electric tugs could be used to tow ships. Sure, towing a ship won't be quite as efficient as using a straight electric ship, but it has some advantages. An electric tug is cheaper to develop than an electric cargo ship and people have already made a start on them. It makes use of existing capital in the form of current fuel oil powered ships, as any ship can be electrically tugged. Short range is not a problem - an electric tug could operate between two reasonably close ports towing ships in both directions (but not at the same time). The tugs could tow ships with filth emitting engines through waters where there are restrictions on ship sulphur emissions. The electric tugging of seamen and their ships could start where low electricity costs and or environmental restrictions make it the most profitable, and as costs decline and/or the cost of bunker fuel goes up, electric tugging could be expanded to other areas. Electric tugs could even be used over long distance sea lanes, either through the use of massive flow batteries, or more likely, the construction of places where tugs could stop to recharge.

Of course, the big advantage for cash strapped shipping companies is the savings. It is much cheaper to move cargo using electricity than bunker fuel. Just how much cheaper depends on the cost of a tug and electricity prices and oil prices, but I'm pretty sure we're at or near a point where it should be profitable. All we really need is some people to start the balls rolling. So, to sum up, if you're into tugging, or you own a shipping company, grab those balls and toss. Don't just use oil, try pulling your seamen with electric tugs. It's good for the environment and will give you a warm feeling deep in your hip pocket.

What the hell?

2012-01-10T19:30:00.006+10:30

So I log onto Blogger and I see that there is a thing called Stats. I don't know if that's new or if it's always been there. Anyway, I click on it and it tells me that my blog has had 10,603 page views. If I'd been asked to guess how many page views I had, I would have said maybe a few hundred, tops. And if I didn't count art students who mistakenly come here trying to research Vincent Van Gough because I made one joke about his ear, I would have said maybe a couple of hundred. So my blog has gotten over 50 times more hits than I thought I had, and I keep getting hits even though I haven't written anything for half a year and I wasn't exactly a regular blogger prior to that. Accounting for spambots, this means I could have up to four or five real live readers every month! This is something I cannot take lightly. It's like what my uncle Ben always used to say to me (whenever I took the ball gag out), "With great hits comes great... bruising." I feel as though I should use the power of my multiple people a month audience to do good. To make the world a better place. But how can I do that? I know, I will start a moral crusade... Oh wait, is it moral to use the word crusade? I will start a moral jihad to to fight poverty, disease, and environmental destruction! It is a weighty burden, but I shall not shirk it. I shall fight for morality, ethical behaviour and plain common decency. And I shall start by writing about how electric tugs are good for seamen.

And I shall fund this moral jihad with advertisments for roboprostitutes!

That Explains it!

2011-07-13T21:27:00.001+09:30

I never thought I'd be so glad to have Prosopagnosia

2011-07-13T15:41:00.003+09:30

Boring Trivia: Episode 1 - The Mime Menace

2011-06-03T12:50:00.004+09:30

I picked my flatmate up from hospital yesterday. He was in overnight and I can tell you I really appreciated having some time alone. It's not that I have anything against interacting with human beings, it's just that one day a week is enough for that sort of thing in my opinion. Doing it every day just doesn't seem hygienic to me. I found that living in Japan suited me much better than Australia, as I could buy everything I wanted, including panties, from vending machines. And when I did interact with humans, our conversations tended to have a soothing, robotic quality.

Anyway, I arrived at the hospital to pick up my flatmate, and the room was very nice. So nice that I'm sure Dr Libertarian would say it was giving people an incentive to have an apple corer like biopsy probes shoved into their livers. Now personally, if someone offered me a nice room for a night in return for being stabbed with an apple corer, I don't think I would take them up on it, but who am I to question the wisdom of Dr Libertarian?

As soon as I arrived my flatmate started talking to me. Although I'd just had 24 hours to myself, I'm afraid that in less than a minute my conversation tank was full. I've explained to my flatmate that talking is mostly an adversive experience for me, but that doesn't seem to have any effect. I've tried to set a good example by miming a great deal of my communication, but that just makes her threaten me with apple corers and a variety of other objects, both sharp and blunt.

Anyway, I took him home where more conversation occurred. In general, I find talking to myself to be rather boring, even though I have an advantage over most people in that I don't actually know what I am going to say. Despite this, I do tend to find what I say marginally more interesting than what other people usually say. Unfortunately, my flatmate seems to feel exactly the same way about what she says, and so doesn't stop very often to let me say something or pay much attention to when I do say something. A great deal of human misery seems to result from this imbalance. Obviously there is a great untapped market out their for a drug that would make what someone else says sound more interesting than what the drug taker themselves says. The only drawback might be the violence that results from people trying to force others to take it.

Now you may have noticed that I described my flatmate as being both a he and a she. This is because sometimes people go into hospital one sex and they come out another. As a result, I have logically concluded that when a person is inside a hospital their sex must be indeterminate and I have reflected that in my writing.

Trivial Pursuit

2011-06-03T12:46:00.003+09:30

I have noticed that a lot people write about their day to day lives on the internet. I don't know why. Surely if people were interested in day to day lives they could simply pay more attention to their own lives which are more likely to be more relevant to them than the life of someone else on the internet? But people still insist on expending vast quantities of ones and zeros detailing the boring trivia of their day to day lives on the internet. As a provisional hypothesis, I have decided they do this because it is enjoyable. Since I am such a thrill seeker I have decided to try this myself and see if it results in pulses of pleasure coursing through my limbic system. (The fact that I am short on heroin this week has nothing to do with my decision to seek out alternative sources of pleasure pulses.) I will warn you though, it likely to be extremely boring. It's hard enough for me to be interesting when I make stuff up, let alone when I'm telling you the boring details of my day to day routine where entire whole weeks can go by without my actions resulting in a single fatality. Still, I'll give it a go. I mean, it's not as if anyone reads this blog anyway, except for you of course, so very few fatalities via boredom should result.

MUST BURN COAL! 24/7!

2011-05-15T13:23:00.006+09:30

I've been in communication with someone who appears very convinced that solar power won't reduce greenhouse gas emissions because coal power plants HAVE TO run at full capacity 24/7. I explained that, according to my admittedly limited knowledge of combustion, if you stop putting coal inside a coal power plant it will shut down, but he still seemed rather insistent that this wasn't possible. I'm afraid that he might have stumbled upon the horrible truth:

PLANT MANAGER: Terrible news! During the night someone installed 20 gigawatts of solar panels! It's an absolute disaster ! Fifteen minute spot prices are now below our marginal operating costs!

CHIEF ENGINEER: What? You mean electricity prices are now less than what the coal we're burning is worth? I guess we have no choice but to power down.

PLANT MANAGER: Power down? What do you mean, power down? Are you crazy! It's not one of his appointed holy days of maintenance!

CHIEF ENGINEER: What are you talking about?

PLANT MANAGER: You know exactly what I'm talking about!

CHIEF ENGINEER: You don't mean the stories the night shift workers whisper in the dark are true do you?

PLANT MANAGER: Every word!

CHIEF ENGINEER: So, if we don't... He...

PLANT MANAGER: Yes! If we don't keep the turbines operating at near maximum capacity, Gilgamax will arise and feast upon the carbon of the living! We have no choice but to keep this plant operating at full capacity and dump the surplus electricity into the grid and use it as a huge resistor! It will blow out every mains connected electrical device within ten klicks, but if we don't do it, those poor fools out there will loose a lot more than just TV and refrigeration!

CHIEF ENGINEER: Okay, I'm with you. I'll do it. I just pray to god it works. And I pray that he'll forgive those damn fools and their solar power! When will they ever learn!

The Horror

2011-05-09T11:19:00.012+09:30

Not even Google can stand before the might of Hargreaves' Mr Men. I had hoped that their lack of reproductive capacity meant we had seen the last of them. Nothing in the area 51 autopsies indicated any sign of reproductive organs in the Roswell specimens, and I just hope to god that Johnson's theories about binary fission were wrong. The good news is that at least this specimen appears rather elderly.

I'm a very light traveller. I pack only my wits. Extraodinarily light.

2011-03-01T00:57:00.003+10:30

I was packing my bag to take a trip today. I took a one terabyte portable hard drive out of its cardboard box and dumped it into my bag. Then I carefully packed three paperbacks into the cardboard box and gently stowed it. Why? Because three paperbacks cost more than a terabyte hard drive. I'm sure there are bloggers out there who could easily get a thousand words out of this simple observation.

I Don't Understand

2010-12-21T18:51:00.002+10:30

I saw the latest Harry Potter movie. What I don't understand is why the paseltongue language of snakes has phenomes that require lips to pronouce.

I don't know

2010-12-21T11:10:00.001+10:30

RONALD: How can we tell if a computer is conscious?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: How can we tell that humans are conscious and not biological automatons?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: How can we tell if a computer is sentient?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: How can we tell if humans are sentient?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: How can we tell if a computer has a soul?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: How can we tell if humans have souls?

BRAK: I don't know.

RONALD: Well then, don't you think that asking if a computer can be conscious or sentient makes as much sense as asking if a computer can have a soul?

BRAK: I don't know.

There's gold in that there moon!

2010-12-12T18:28:00.005+10:30

NASA, in its infinite wisdom, recently smacked a big chunk of rocket into the moon and examined what got blowed up. It was called the LCROSS mission. It appears that besides water there is gold on the moon. As a result, what with todays high gold prices, some people have suggested that it should be mined. Unfortunately even at today's prices it's still not worthwhile to mine the gold and send it back to earth. To get around this is has been suggested that the gold could be mined and then left on the moon and certificates of ownership could be sold instead. This would have the advantage of making the gold very resistant to theft. However, I don't think this plan will take off as a viable business model:

SALESPERSON: Care to buy a lunar gold certificate, sir?

CUSTOMER: What's the difference between this and a normal gold certificate?

SALESPERSON: It's just like a normal gold certificate, except that if you want the gold, you have to go to the moon to get it.

CUSTOMER: Err...I think I'll pass on that.

SALESPERSON: But it's just as good as a normal gold certificate!

CUSTOMER: Except for the whole moon thing.

SALESPERSON: But it doesn't matter! Hardly anyone ever hands in their certificate for real gold.

CUSTOMER: But the fact is I could if I wanted to, which is sort of the point. No one is going to buy lunar gold certificates when they can get a normal earth one for the same price.

SALESPERSON: How about I give you a discount?

CUSTOMER: By giving a discount you are making it obvious that it is not as good as a normal gold certificate. And how much of a discount do you think you would have to give for it to become worthwhile for people to buy them? Let me give you an earthly example. Would you want to buy a gold certificate that represents the gold in a billion litres of sea water? After all, the gold is definitely there, it's just really hard to get to, just like your moon gold. Currently, just like with sea water, the cost of collecting your gold is more than the gold is worth, this means your lunar gold is worth nothing.

SALESPERSON: Well then, can I interest you in some helium 3 futures, or perhaps some Czarist bonds, or possibly a time share on a nice bridge in Brooklyn?

CUSTOMER: No thanks.

SALESPERSON: If you cut me in, I could shift some of those sea water gold certificates for you...

Economics without Illusions by Joseph Heath - A Canadian who loves light bulbs, but knows them not!

2010-12-03T23:08:00.010+10:30

Joseph... can I call you Joseph? Of course I can. I mean, that's your name. It would be pretty silly if I called you Esmeralda. Anyway, Joseph, I have to tell you, you're a really wonderful guy and you've written a great book. I love you man. But not physically.

I just thought I should mention the not physically part because I know Canadians tend to be a very touchy feely people. I sat next to a Canadian during dinner once and she continuously bumped against me, poked my shoulder, grabbed my arm and so on. There was so much physical contact that by the time we finished dessert I decided that this must be what having sex is like. (Lots of nasal sounds with some cheesecake at the end.)

Anyway, I just want to say that you've written a great book, Joseph. But, and it pains me to have to say this... well, no, actually it doesn't pain me. Probably because I bear a marked resemblance unto a big prick who thrives on pedantry. But anyway, you say you are very fond of light bulbs, but while you may love light bulbs, do you truly know them? I think not, Joseph. I think not.

You say that in a cold clime such as Canada the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs is of no import, as the waste heat merely goes towards heating the home during the 27 months of the year when it's fricking cold in Canada. But that's where you're wrong, my philosophical friend. You see, I did my research by asking a hallucination, and it said that many Canadian homes have some form of heat exchanger which performs a much more efficient job of warming Canadian domiciles than electrical resistance heating ever could! This means you are WRONG to say incandescent light bulbs don't waste energy! Or at least you are wrong provided my hallucination was telling the truth. And even if a Canadian home doesn't have a heat exchanger they often have central heating which is about three times more efficient at providing heat than an electric lightbulb!

But aside from that, great book. Very interesting. I liked it.

That word, I don't think it means what you think it means.

2010-10-27T13:20:00.007+10:30

Recently I saw the decision by China to sell less rare earth elements described as imperialism. I'm sorry, but that's not even close. Going to China with a flotilla of gunships and forcing them to sell you their stuff in return for smack is imperialism. Choosing not to sell your own stuff to other countries is not imperialism. The lack of any attempt to extend rule over another country is a bit of a give away that imperialism isn't going on, as is the lack of violence, threats of violence, or even the bribing of corrupt officials. (Pssssst! Hey, I'll give you 10,000 Euros if you promise not to buy our stuff, okay?)

New

2010-09-18T13:29:00.001+09:30

Fill your ring dams with used plastic drink bottles!

2010-04-03T19:49:00.005+10:30

Rural Australia has a vast number of ring dams. When flying you can sometimes see a dozen or more of them winking up at you. Farmers need water storage and ring dams are generally the cheapest option. Unfortunately, they are fairly inefficient and lose a lot of water to evaporation. In most of Australia a ring dam will lose over 1,000 liters of water per square meter of surface area a year. In some places, twice that. Dams can be covered but this is expensive and requires ongoing attention and maintenance. Thousands of floating balls could be thrown into a dam as a low maintenance approach, but there is probably no way they could currently be made cheaply enough to be cost effective for farmers without a subsidy. So I thought, why not fill up ring dams up with floating used plastic drink bottles?

Provided enough were put in a dam they should cut evaporation by more than half. They may need to be partially filled with water to increase the dam surface area that is blocked from contact with air and stop them being blown out in a gale. Used drink bottles are very cheap. Currently people just throw them out. They are also made of materials that are known to be safe for long-term contact with drinking water. Supermarkets in rural areas could collect used bottles and donate them to farmers for ring dam covering as a green public relations exercise.

Now there may be problems with this idea, apart from the aesthetic one of filling dams with rubbish, but if there are problems I've overlooked, hopefully people will comment and let me know.

Downing Smack with Brad Delong.

2010-02-19T12:36:00.007+10:30

There is an American, by the name of Brad Delong. He claims to have America's silliest dog. And these Americans, when they say they have America's silliest dog, what they are really claiming is that they have the world's silliest dog.

We will not stand for such insolence!

The Australian silly dog project shall triumph over all! Hund dummkopt uber alles!

But why, you may ask, shall we triumph? The answer is simple. Australian animals are intrinsically the silliest in the world. Our kangaroos haven't even worked out that first you move one leg and then you move the other leg and walk instead of jumping! Our hedgehogs lay eggs! Our ducks have fur and poison spines! Our bears are midgets with double thumbs that eat gum leaves! We have fish with lungs and fish that climb trees! We have frogs that can estivate non-stop for seven years! Try estivating for a week non-stop and see how you feel. In Australia, every swan is black! Except the white ones!

These Americans have nothing on us! Nothing! Our cats eat vegemite and float around on surf mats in the pool! Our jumbucks fit in tucker bags! And our dogs, they are the silliest of all. And I'm not talking about Banjo Patterson, play fetch with a lit explosive charge sort of silly. I'm talking about deep down silliness that seeps into your dog like liquid into this chalk. The sort of silliness that traps your dog at the end of the street after you pretend to tie it to an invisible post. The sort of silliness that makes your dog think that it is a good idea to try to walk on grass clippings floating on top of a pond. Silliness that makes your dog think that bouncing up and down and barking in front of a brown snake is a good idea or that eating the chili pepper that someone spat out because it was too hot is a bright thing to do. That is the sort of silliness I am talking about. And with this silliness we shall triumph!

That is all.

Message to Icelandic President Olafur Grimsson on Default - Ur doing it Rong!

2010-01-08T13:04:00.012+10:30

Icelandic President and epic level D&D character, Olafur Grimsson, wants to put to a referendum whether or not Iceland should pay back money its banking system lost, as it agreed to long before billions of Euros in debt suddenly hove into view.

Now obviously the good and proper thing would have been for Olafur Grimsson to have taken his mighty axe and slain the evil financial wizards who were offering such ruinously high returns on cash deposits that obviously could only be sustained via the use of dark finance. But alas, the time for that is long past. He allowed himself to be seduced towards the selfish side and did nothing to prevent the sacrifice of Iceland’s virtuous credit rating upon the altar of the efficient markets hypothesis.

Now it may be that the best thing Iceland could do is default. However, I feel I should mention that at least part of Australia's prosperity is based upon the fact that we have always fulfilled our financial promises, no matter how freaking stupid those promises may have been. (What's that, Britain? You want us to pay for the privilege of sending a generation of young men to the other side of the planet to march slowly towards machine guns? Sure, we can do that...). And Iceland's promise to guarrantee bank deposits was not some crazy far out idea it came up with while high on magic 'shrooms and wode. It was a perfectly normal financial arrangement. But if Olafur Grimsson thinks the best thing for Iceland to do is default then he should take the responsibility onto his own shoulders and convince the government to just do it. This way if everything goes south (and face it, in Iceland that's about the only direction anything can go) he can fall on his sword for the good of the Icelandic people. (He has a sword as well as an axe.) But putting it to a referendum is axing the Icelandic people up the geothermal geyser. If Olafur Grimsson took responsibility people could say, "It wasn't our fault, we wanted to repay but he made us default. But now he's gone it's safe to invest in Iceland again. Please give us your money." But putting it to a referendum will make the Icelandic people as a whole look like deadbeats. Olafar Grimsson should Viking up and take responsibility himself if he believes that defaulting is the best thing for Iceland to do. If he doesn’t then his shift to the selfish side will be complete and he will be the villain of this piece forever more, and that’s a long time.

UPDATE: Daniel Davies explains the Icelandic default with epic level clarity despite relying on facts and years of financial experience rather than hallucinations as I do: http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/

Avatar Concerns Race but is not Racist

2010-01-06T13:31:00.012+10:30

Despite what some people have opined on the interwebby net, Avatar is not racist. I say this because after watching the movie I did not feel the slightest desire to go out and beat up Native Americans. In fact, the movie did not make me feel like going out and inflicting harm on any group currently or historically identified by race. I do not see how Avatar encourages anyone to do harm to any racial group or negatively portrays any racial group. The one group that appears to be portrayed negatively via proxy is the US armed forces, but they are generally not considered to be a race. Indeed, I would speculate that the reason some people are calling Avatar racist is precisely because something that might represent the US military is portrayed in a bad light and they don’t like it.

Avatar concerns race, but is not racist. Racism involves inflicting harm, either through action or inaction, to people on the basis of race. Encouraging people to inflict harm to people on the basis of race is racist, but Avatar doesn’t do this. People could say that the way Avatar handles race is a heavy-handed, unrealistic, incompetent, derivative, wish-fulfilling, colonialist guilt fantasy of The White Man’s Burden in 3D, and people are welcome to these opinions, but that doesn’t make it racist. It merely means the movie is not as good as the people who hold these opinions would like it to be. The good is not the enemy of the perfect.

Personally I find it encouraging at this point in history that the most expensive and potentially most successful movie of all time has the message that it is wrong to invade other people’s land and steal their resources. It is a simple message that a lot of people don’t seem to have gotten yet and so it bears repeating. I find this an encouraging development and one that James Cameron should be praised for. After all, it would have been very easy for him to have made True Lies Part II instead of Avatar.

Looking at his previous work I would say that Avatar has the most positive theme of any of James Cameron’s movies. Despite this, his other movies weren’t as heavily criticised as Avatar. The themes of his previous works were:

Terminator: Always use a condom when having sex with a man from the future.

Rambo First Blood Part II: Asian people can’t shoot straight and are vulnerable to having their armies defeated by one white guy with large muscles.

Aliens: It feels good to cheer a woman saving a human child by setting fire to alien babies. Also, despite being a different colour on the inside, androids are people too.

The Abyss: If you are in an environment that is known to drive people insane, make sure no one person has access to both the atomic bombs and the submarines.

Terminator 2: No matter how advanced the enemy killer robot is, your outdated killer robot can beat it as long as it has large muscles.

True Lies: Middle-Eastern people are evil unless they take orders from a white guy.

Titanic: Kate Winslet has a freakish liver that stores enough glygogen to keep her alive on a crate in the icy Atlantic despite spending hours having sex, running through an ocean liner and wading through freezing water.

Spiderman: Teenage boys who shoot white stuff at Kirsten Dunst shouldn’t be ashamed.

Maybe in the future I’ll write a post full of snide comments about how to me the movie Avatar seemed to be about a planet of blue elves being invaded by space hobbits. And how, now that indigenous Americans are finally starting to be portrayed sympathetically in movies, maybe in 400 years time Americans will start making movies in which Arabs are portrayed sympathetically. But for now, please don’t write or say that Avatar is racist. Instead, say that it didn’t deal with race as well as you would have liked and explain why.

Do you support nuking the sun or do you support terrorism?

2009-12-09T14:24:00.007+10:30

Why should we nuke the sun? Because we've got the bomb, that's why! Two words - nuclear atomic weapons! The sun, Alpha Centuri, Betelgeuse, they can have all the hydrogen they want, they can have a big hydrogen cake walk right through the middle of intersteller space and it won't make a lick of difference, because we've got the bomb, Okay? Edward Teller's not dead - he's frozen! And when we find a cure for backstabbing we're going to thaw him out and he's going to be pretty annoyed. You know why? You ever been stabbed in the back? Well multiply that by 15 million times and that's how annoyed Edward Teller's going to be. I'm gonna get Edward Teller and Fred Hoyle and Louis Slotin and we're going to fly down to the sun with 600 tons of lithium. If only we'd nuked the sun earlier we'd be at Alpha Centuri by now. But no, we had to wait and now scientists say the Solarians have been conducting extensive underground nuclear tests for some time now. Long enough to bathe the earth in deadly, skin cancer causing radiation. If we don't act now what will you tell your children when they look up at you with their innocent little faces and ask, "Mommy, Daddy, why is the sun still shining?"

2009-07-17T19:14:00.001+09:30

I’m afraid my new job isn’t working out to well. I’m starting to think it’s just a little bit dodgy. There was something fishy about my orientation that I couldn’t quite put my finger on:

MANAGER: Then after Bert has stunned them and Pigdog has put them in the tub of ice, your job is to remove their kidneys.

ME: Are you sure this is legal?

MANAGER: Well of course it is! You've heard of organ transplants, haven't you?

ME: Well, yes.

MANAGER: And how they save thousands of lives each year?

ME: Yes…

MANAGER: There you have it! You're helping to save lives!

ME: But aren't we only supposed to use willing donors?

MANAGER: They're all volunteers.

ME: Shouldn't volunteers attempt to run and scream less?

MANAGER: No, no, those are both perfectly normal symptoms of excess kidney syndrome. And you wouldn't want them to suffer from that now would you?

ME: I guess not...

MANAGER: Well then, get to it. Pick up your meat cleaver!

ME: Allright then... (CHOP!)

DONOR: OH GOD NO!

MANAGER: See, obvious case of excess kidney syndrome.

ME: Those aren't kidneys.

MANGER: Close enough.

China's Green Dam Youth Escort Program has all the porn busting power you need!

2009-06-20T10:40:00.006+09:30

China's Green Dam Youth Escort Program has all the porn busting power you need to keep your country safe from the internet! With 3D monitor technology just around the corner, can you really afford to be unprotected and have something unexpectedly come through your computer screen and poke your eye out? But porn busting is not all it does! Green Dam Youth Escort Program limits the amount of time youth can stay on instant messaging and social networking sites to prevent addiction! Forcing them to go out on the streets and spend time with their compatriots such as Pigdog and Spider and their magic bags of white powder that chemically sooth the pain of internet withdrawal! And, in addition, as an extra bonus, Green Dam Youth Escort Program now contains a historical whitewash feature that removes all references to the Tian An Men square protests or the Fulun Gong crackdown. But for those of you who like mystically based martial arts protest movements, you can have all the Boxer Rebellion you like!

And what's more, this great new program will come completely free with every new computer sold in China after July the first! But wait, there's still more! It isn't even compulsory! You don't actually have to install it! Although it might be a good idea if you do, you know, for protection. You want to be protected, don't you? The internet's a dangerous place. Who knows what could happen to you if you went around unprotected. For example, a truncheon could fly out of your monitor and hit you in the kidneys when you have your back turned.

I recently spoke with the Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Ziying, who really isn’t anything at all like Joseph Goebbles:

ME: How do you respond to accusations that Green Dam Youth Escort program is part of a historical whitewash of the Tien an Men Square protests?

MINSTER: We don't. And we certainly don't put people who make such accusations under house arrest.

ME: I see.

MINISTER: And we don't approve of the term historical whitewash. When activated Green Dam will eliminate it from existence.

ME: Well the term certainly seems more appropriate when used in an Australian context. But what of allegations that the porn filter which detects skin colour is defective and blocks pictures of Garfield the cat while allowing pornographic images of people with black skin to get through? Isn't this likely to lead to the development of some interesting fetishes among the population that will boost African tourism?

MINISTER: Yes, but we believe the slight decrease in furries will make it all worthwhile.

ME: And what of reports that parts of the program were stolen from a US internet nanny program?

MINISTER: Lies spread by paper hyenas. And anyway, there wouldn't be any USA if we hadn't invented gunpowder, so they should cut us some fricking slack.

ME: And how do you respond to those who say that the program is just one more example of ham-fisted government censorship?

MINISTER: We totally disagree with the term ham-fisted censorship, as it is insulting to our Muslim minorities. Beef-fisted is a much more accurate term. However, in order to maintain good relations with India, the official term is now chicken-fisted. The term ham-fisted will be eradicated upon Green Dam's first update.

And there you have it. No doubt Green Dam Youth Escort Program will have many interesting economic effects. I for one am selling my Chinese language furry orientated web site and I'm starting a Chinese language Nigeria based mail order bride business.

Morgan Spurlock Discovers the Magical Olive Trees of Copious Oil!

2009-06-19T19:50:00.003+09:30

Once again, to satisfy my urge to walk through airport security while carrying a book with a picture of an internationally wanted criminal mastermind on the back cover, I picked up Morgan Spurlock's, "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" again and discovered the route cause of all Middle-Eastern conflict. They are fighting over the magical Palestinian olive trees. How do I know that these Palestinian olive trees are magical? Well, on page 142 Ahmed explains to Morgan Spurlock that six or seven trees should yield enough olives to make about make 20 kiloliters of olive oil. And as everyone knows, a kilogram of olives contains under a fifth of a litre of oil, so each olive tree is producing something like 15 tons of olives. This is truly magical. And, as everyone also knows, since olive trees are typically grown at a density of about one per 34 square metres, this means that these magical olive trees produce about 90 litres of oil per square metre. That's better than a Saudi Arabian oil field. No wonder people are fighting over the land.

Or is it possible that there was some sort of mistake in translation and Ahmed actually said 20 kilograms of oil and not 20 kilolitres? I suppose such a mistake could have happened, but what are the chances that Morgan or his editor wouldn't have picked up on it? Not very high I’d wager. No, it seems much more likely that Morgan Spurlock has discovered magical olive trees of copious oil in the middle-east and I’m sure the rest of his book describes a Harry Potteresque adventure where the trees play an integral roll in the plot. I shall eagerly read on to see if Osama Bin Laden turns out to be an irredeemably evil wizard, or if it’s all some big misunderstanding and everyone has scones and tea together at the end.

A Twit in Iran

2009-06-16T19:58:00.005+09:30

10:04 - Iranian Police have confiscated my camera equipment. Attempting to film protests using mobile phone.

10:07 - Iranian Police officer complains that my camera doesn't work. I tell him you have to push on the battery pack. He says his cousin can fix it.

10:09 - I realize my mobile phone doesn't have a camera. In retrospect I should have realized sometime in the past four years that my phone doesn't have one. The colourless grey liquid crystal display should also have been a give away. Never bothered to replace it because if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

10:10 - Iranian police clubbed my mobile out of my hand and it's swelling up and turning purple. My hand that is, not the mobile phone. (Although a mobile phone that swelled up and turned purple would be cool.) Huzzuh! I now have an excuse to buy a new phone!

10:13 - Crap! I fixed my phone. Probably stuck with it for another four years now. Hand has returned to normal colour. The purple started fading after I stopped squeezing my wrist so hard.

10:17 - Have found a ten year old with a mobile phone that has a camera. I am now holding him above the crowd so he can take photos for me.

10:22 - Police didn't appreciate me using a ten year old to take photos and smashed his mobile phone. Fortunately I suffered no injuries this time as I had a convenient shield.

10:26 - Other ten year olds reluctant to work for me despite promise of delicious candy. I am going to try to get through the police cordon and ask the people lying on the street bleeding how they feel.

10:32 - Plan to get through police line by disguising myself as a pinata unsuccessful. Supplies of delicous candy running low. Fortunately I still have adequate quantities of teeth.

10:39 - Plan to get through police line disguised as pig also unsucessful. Attempt to curry good will by handing out curried pork and other pork products did not go down well for some reason.

10:42 - Have successfully bribed a police officer with my remaining delicious candy and two pounds of revolting candy. Passing though police line now.

10:43 - I kneel down before an injured protestor. He cries out in pain. I take my knee off his groin.

10:44 - "Hello," I say. The injured man looks up at me and says in perfect English, "As you can see, the Iranian people are in a desperate struggle for democracy..." I cut him off.

10:45 - "No long speeches. As a result of constant exposure to modern media we no longer have the attention span to... Wow! Look at that guy get beat up! Excuse me..."

$134.5 Billion in Smuggled US Treasury Bills equals 12.4 sandwiches in North Korea

2009-06-15T09:46:00.005+09:30

Two Japanese people were caught by Italian police trying to smuggle $134.5 billion in US Treasury bills into Switzerland in a false bottom compartment in a suitcase. Apparently this is illegal. But while it certainly does seem suspicious, perhaps we shouldn't jumping to conclusions and assume that an intentional misdeed was performed here. After all, this could just be a cutural misunderstanding. You see, people in Japan have a habit of leaving large amounts of cash lying around. I know that when I was in Japan I'd often have $15,000 in yen piled up on my dresser. Perhaps some Japanese person just happened to keep $134.5 billion in US T-bills in their suitcase, equal to one fifth of the total amount of US debt held by Japan, and then forgot all about it when they decided to fly to Switzerland for the annual cuckoo clock festival?

On the other other hand, when I think if counterfeiting and Japan, I think North Korea. I know North Korean submariners would often turn up on Himi beach and offer to trade US dollars, Euros, bearer bonds, treasury bills, the Mona Lisa and so on in return for a sandwich. If you couldn't get a stack of greasy crayola greenbacks at least an inch high in return for a sandwich you'd been ripped off. Now $134.5 billion in US treasury bills, some of them with a face value of $500 million, is a kind of stupid thing to counterfiet, as people are unlikely to simply take your word that they are fair dinkum and not check the serial numbers, for the days when the local corner store would accept a $500 million T-bill at face value are long gone. But nothing has stopped our friends north of the 38th parallel from counterfieting strange things in the past, and when the boss says counterfeit $134.5 billion in treasury bills you counterfeit $134.5 billion in treasury bills without mentioning that they are impossible to pass off because a bullet in the head tomorrow is better than a bullet in the head today. (Not that too many forgers get shot, usually it's more a case that the forgers pretend to forge and the secret police pretend to shoot them.) And anyway, maybe they were hoping they could find someone very trusting with a spare $500 million who didn't feel the need to verify them. And who knows, maybe the two Japanese people caught with the bonds handed over a huge stack of sandwiches for them.

But the Japanese smugglers where fools from trying to get the bonds into Switzerland. They should have gone straight to where the real money is with North Korean forgeries. Selling them on ebay.

Ha! I did it! I smuggled a chunk of Spurlock through Airport Security!

2009-06-11T12:57:00.004+09:30

I did it! I smuggled a chunk of Morgan Spurlock through airport security! I am such a smooth operator. Which chunk of Morgan Spurlock you ask? The chunk of his thoughts, fears and humour he codified into the book, "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" The airport security person at the screening station did do a double take when he saw the picture of Osama Bin Laden on the back cover but didn't try to stop me. This could be because he was too terrified of my threatening presence to do anything or maybe I got through because he was a terrorist himself and a member of Osama's punk the American lickspittles club. Or maybe, just maybe, Australian domestic airport security actually has a modicum of common sense. (But I doubt it. It's much more likely my terrifying visage filled his heart with a surfeit of fear that quelled his courage in my opinon.)

It's a good thing I don't live in a free country. If I did I'd probably still be sitting in an airport interrogation chamber being questioned about what they'd discovered after performing an exhaustive "search" of my person:

AIRPORT SECURITY: And what is this?

ME: That's my breakfast.

AIRPORT SECURITY: And what is this?

ME: That's yesterday's breakfast.

AIRPORT SECURITY: If that's the case then perhaps you'd care to explain how it is we found today's breakfast prior to yesterday's breakfast?

ME: I'm very talented. And sometimes I have trouble letting go. Yesterday's breakfast is the only thing I have to remember my lungfish by.

AIRPORT SECURITY: Your lungfish?

ME: Yes, he drowned. But at least he died doing what he loved. Kind of like David Carradine in that respect. And what he loved was lying motionless at the bottom of a tank. So he was kind of also like a Tien an Men Square protester. But he did not die in vain. Just before he drowned we were able to perfect the technology required to upload lungfish into electronic form. We released the resulting cyber lungfish onto the internet where he went viral and he now lies motionless at the bottom of aquarium screen savers across the world. And he tasted kind of muddy.

AIRPORT SECURITY: Enough of your lies! You will now provide us with a list of your associates who may be planning to engage in harmless activity in airports so that we can stomp down on them as part of a magic ritual to appease the gods of terrorism so they won't send their suicide bombers against us!

ME: Well, my friend has a Megatron t-shirt and it's possible he could wear it to an airport and thereby blatently terrorise passangers with fictional autobot CGI extremism.

AIRPORT SECURITY: Excellent, excellent, tell me more!

ME: My grandmother constantly smuggles weapons grade titanium in her hip joint.

AIRPORT SECURITY: Good, good, go on.

ME: Every year I'm visted by a man who violates international airspace, along with his team of 12 caribou.

AIRPORT SECURITY: Yes, yes, don't stop.

ME: The guy next door has 27 guns, watches westling all day and has written a manifesto on why god wants him to hijack a plane and use it to penetrate the holo shroud that evil scientists use to hide heaven from the masses so people will believe in evolution. Here's a pamphlet he wrote called, "Why God Wants Me to Hijack a Plane and use it to Penetrate the Holo Shroud."

AIRPORT SECURITY: No, that information might actually be useful. We're more interested in pointless fear mongering through over reacting to inconsequential nonsense. Go back to telling me about the guy with the megatron t-shirt.

Finding Love Through Bioengineering or Possibly Lycanthropy.

2009-06-08T17:05:00.003+09:30

PETER: Hello, I don't believe we've met. My name is Peter.

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: Peter Green. My father owns the bakery.

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: His name is Tyrone Green. Perhaps you know my brother?

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: His name is Andrew.

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: My brother, Andrew Green. But perhaps you could tell me your name?

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: You!

OWL WOMAN: Who who.

PETER: Your name is Who Who? You're not from around these parts, are you?

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: You!

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: Oh, now you're just making fun of me.

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: Me! Oh, look out! A mouse!

OWL WOMAN: MUNCH MUNCH

PETER: Oh, now that's disgusting! On the other hand I find your large eyes very attractive and I also find the way you can rotate your head 180 degrees alluring. Would you like to come to my place for dinner? You can meet my father and brother.

OWL WOMAN: Who?

PETER: Let's not go into that again.

Will the Rebound Effect increase the use of fossil fuels?

2009-06-07T18:27:00.009+09:30

Tonight on the Ronald Brak Discussion Hour we will be debating the rebound effect as it applies to fossil fuels. To start us off, perhaps you could tell us just what the rebound effect is, Ronald?

RONALD: Well, to put it simply, the rebound effect, or Jevon's Paradox, results from people using fossil fuels more efficiently and as a direct result they are able to afford to use more fossil fuels. For example, if someone who can only afford to heat one room in their house gets insulation installed, then instead of reducing the amount of fossil fuel they burn, they might continue to use the same amount and heat two or three rooms. However, this effect is something that only really occurs to a large extent in the developing world and isn’t something that people in richer nations need to be too concerned about, especially where improved efficiency results from a price on carbon. I’m sure Mr Brak will agree with me on this.

BRAK: I couldn’t disagree more. Indeed, the force of my disagreement is psychically radiating from my cerebral cortex with the force of a billon exploding suns. If any of you had even the slightest amount of residual telepathic ability your heads would not only have exploded but also imploded so rapidly they would have come out of the other side and exploded again. You are so very, very wrong.

RONALD: Would you care to elaborate?

BRAK: Certainly. The force of my disagreement roils the sea of troubles and dashes it to vapour, driving a rain of squalling pandemonium before its contentious fury to lash the recalcitrant fools who have the audacity to…

RONALD: No, I meant could you elaborate on why you disagree, rather than elaborating on your disagreement itself?

BRAK: Oh. Well, I disagree because common everyday experience refutes what you say with such force a roll of thunder is heard across the land. Speaking from my own common everyday experience, I know that when I replaced my personal car, a V8 interceptor, I replaced it with two hybrids which I drove by standing with one foot on each car roof while using the controls via a marionette operated by each hand through specially installed sunroofs. Then, when I discovered that I was still only using half the amount of fuel that my V8 did, I bought two more hybrids, hitched all four to a chariot and had them drag me through the streets as I lashed those hybrid beasts most cruelly with a whip. Actually the hard part was modifying them so they could feel pain.
Furthermore, after I had my house insulated, rather than use less heating oil I instead was finally able to heat my house to a pleasant 140 degrees celsius. It was quite comfortable, as long as the dehumidifiers were operating and it was filled with the pleasant smell of crispy bacon whenever visitors came around and touched anything metal.
And now, after building that one gig capacity wind farm, the 230 megawatt solar thermal plant and those six gigawatts of dry rock geothermal power, I now heat my house by burying it in 30,000 tons of coal every day and setting it on fire. And it’s simply absurd not to expect other people to do the same out of some namby-pamby sense of environmental responsibility.

RONALD: So you’d be in favour of some sort of regulation to prevent this then?

BRAK: Normally I’d say no, but having to use an asbestos covered mole machine powered and cooled by a torrent of externally supplied liquid nitrogen every time I want to go from the living room to the kitchen to get a snack is becoming rather tiresome.

RONALD: And I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight.

BRAK: I want a mole machine that’s cooled by the latent heat of vaporizing human souls. Now THAT would be cool…

Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden? Where in the world is basic maths?

2009-06-06T15:30:00.005+09:30

I've started reading Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? by Morgan Spurlock. I'm up to page three. Now I'm sure it's a good book. It has a picture of an amusing looking camel on the front and I don't think you are allowed to put pictures of amusing camels on the front of books that aren't good. But I've had to temporarily stop at page three because Morgan Spurlock puts these three sentences right next to each other, "In 2002, a representative year, almost 43,000 Americans died in car accidents. That same year, only 600 Americans died in aircraft crashes. Your chances of dying in an aircraft are around one in 10 million, versus one in 7,000 in a car."

Now I admit that I am completely unaware of Morgan Spurlock ever claiming to be exceptionally mathematically skilled. In fact his skills seem to lie in writing, directing, producing and consuming vast amounts of junk food. However, I would have hoped that an editor or someone would have noticed that if 2002 is a representative year, then Americans are 72 times more likely to die in car accidents than plane crashes, while if they have around a, "...one in 10 million chance of dying in an aircraft versus one in 7,000 of dying in a car," then Americans are 1,429 times more likely to die in a car than an airplane. So which one is it? Seventy-two times more likely or 1,429 times more likely? Because it's quite a difference.

I'm afraid that mistakes like this will continue to happen as long as people continue to fail to get me to check their work before it's published. It's the only sure way for people to have their mistakes removed and my own inserted. So I invite Morgan to send me his next book so I can go over it before it's printed.

Done Fu!

2009-06-05T23:25:00.010+09:30

David Carradine, the actor who single handedly beat Bruce Lee in a battle to see who looked the least Asian has died. Apparently from sexual hijinks in a hotel room in Bangcock, which is exactly how my friend Benedict has always wanted to go. Now for some strange reason people have been saying that the way he died is bad for his posterity. I don't see why. If he had died from a heart attack, two years from now if someone mentioned his name I'd go, "David who?" But now I'll go, "Oh yeah, isn't he the guy who..." His immortality is assured, and this is true regardless of what actually happened in that hotel room. The internet has already done its work. He will live on in our hearts and minds, and for some people with over active imaginations, our closets.

Edwin Hubble versus Fred Hoyle Celebrity Deathmatch! ('Cause they're both dead.)

2009-06-05T13:50:00.005+09:30

So last night the neighbour started channelling Edward Hubble and got into a drunken fight with the ghost of Fred Hoyle. "You want a big bang? I'll give you a big bang!" cried Hoyle before spurting ecoplasm everywhere. (Who you gonna call? A good drycleaner, that's who.) Anyway, I was on the phone to Satoshi Tajiri at the time discussing beetles and the sound of the ruckus next door inspired me to pitch an idea to him about putting stars in the ring and getting them to fight. He said this had already been done with Celebrity Deathmatch and I said, "No, stars as in actual immense balls of flaming hydrogen. The neat thing is the stars will be the stars!" Satoshi fell silent for a minute, I could tell he was astounded by my idea, and then he said he'd get back to me. I have a feeling this could be as big as Pokemon:

RED DWARF: I may be small, but my FLARE POWER shall defeat him!

MANAGER: Take it easy Red Dee. You've got the stamina to go the full 15 billion years, just keep your distance in the first round or BLUE HYPERGIANT will catch you with his SUPERNOVA STRIKE. But if you are at apogee when he lets loose you can take it and then just circle around him for the next 14 billion years and win on points. But whatever you do, don't get cocky and stay the hell away from his event horizon.

That's odd. I could have sworn Tolsty was standing next to Lenin in this photograph (instead of on all fours by Stalin and wearing a gimp suit).

2009-06-05T13:24:00.006+09:30

Perhaps I should go back and update some of my old blog posts now that I is a year smarterer? After all, I have all these tins of historical white wash John Howard gave me. You get three tins each time you hand in a black armband.

The Pirates of the Caribbean Computer Game Partakes of Perspiration from a Deceased Pirates Cannon Shot

2009-06-04T17:57:00.010+09:30

I tried playing a computer game recently. It was a big mistake. I tried to play the Pirates of the Caribbean game because it was made by a company with a great reputation. However, this game proved that in the software world it is obviously possible to redeem yourself no matter how heinous the quality of the crud you produced in the past. I began to suspect that it was a bad game when I felt as though I needed an introductory tutorial to get through the introductory tutorial. Things didn't get any better when I found out that sword fighting consisted for the most part of holding your sword in front of your face while your opponents, instead of trying to hit you, would just swing at the sword. Every now and then they'd slow down giving you a chance to strike them, and they would eventually go down, probably gasping as they choked on their own blood about how you cheated by striking them instead of their sword.

But while the swordplay was boring, the pistol shooting was just disturbing. Your game character, Nathaniel Hawke, has a flintlock pistol, so you would think he would only be able to fire it once without reloading it. However, after firing his pistol he immediately puts it back in his pants and then when he pulls it out again eight seconds later it is fully reloaded. It makes me wonder just how is he managing to reload it while it is in his pants without using his hands? I think Nathaniel Hawke must be a very talented man, but his field of specialty does not lie in piracy. I think there are some bar owners in Thailand who would be quite interested in employing his services.

And as the game is called Pirates of the Caribbean, there is of course lots of daring action on the high seas, right? No, not right. There’s lots of deadly boring action, as dying repeatedly is boring. Sailing in the game went like this: Leave port, get attacked by someone, pirates maybe I don’t know, sink and drown. Reload, leave port again, run into storm and sink and drown. Reload again, leave port again, run into another storm and sink and drown again. Stupidly and against all reason, reload again, get to port on neighbouring island, run into dock while attempting to moor and sink and drown in port.

And what is it with games and loading times? And I don't mean having to wait for loading after you have completed an hour or two of play, I mean constantly having to wait for loading every three minutes or so:

ME: I walk from the docks to the town.

GODBOX: Loading town.

ME: What to you mean, loading town? There's nowhere flipping else for me to go, so why couldn't you have loaded the town while I was walking up that pointless beach?

GODBOX: Sheesh, it's only a minute. Keep your shirt on......Here you go, here's the town.

ME: I go to the tavern.

GODBOX: Loading tavern.

ME: Oh Christ on a stick...

GODBOX: .......................................................................
.................................Tavern loaded......no wait.……..okay, it's loaded now, honest.

ME: I buy a bottle of rum.

GODBOX: You can't do that. It's a tavern.

ME: What?

GODBOX: Taverns are for hiring sailors. They have nothing to do with rum. You have to go to the town store for that.

ME: Sheesh, who does a pirate have to kill to get a drink around here? What am I supposed to do? Sing Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of tea? Okay, I go to the town store then.

GODBOX: Loading town.

ME: What do you mean, loading town? I was there only a second ago. How could you have forgotten what the town was like in that time? I was in a fricking one room tavern! How much of your fricking memory does that take up?

GODBOX: I'm sorry, but the universe is uncertain about the state of the town. It's quantum.

ME: Arrghhh!

GODBOX: Town loaded.

ME: I go to the store!

GODBOX: Loading store.

Me: Arrrrrrrrrrg!

GODBOX: Store loaded.

ME: I buy some rum!

GODBOX: Rum bought.

ME: I drink the rum and sing a pirate song.

GODBOX: Drinking rum is not permitted here. You will have to go to the tavern.

ME: ARRRRRGHHHH! (Pulls out pistol, shoots store owner dead.)

GODBOX: Would you like to reload the game?

ME: No, wait... Reloading my pistol feels kind of good.

.

You can have my memory engram when you pry it from my cold stiff cerebral cortex

2009-06-01T13:21:00.002+09:30

Just to avoid any possible confusion, I'll point out that I don't want my memory of naked Uhura removed.

The Top Five Star Trek Movies

2009-06-01T13:16:00.002+09:30

Here's what I think are the top five Star Trek movies. Now I realize that most fans consider The Wrath of Khan to be the best Star Trek movie, but there is one that just manages to beat it in my opinon.

1. Galaxy Quest
2. The Wrath of Khan
3. The Voyage Home
4. The undiscovered Country
5. Blur - Which is what all the other movies are to me. (Except the part where Uhura gets naked. That is seared into my memory and I may need a scalpel to get it out.)

Star Trekking across a really insignificant portion of the universe when you think about it. Oh, and um spoilers. Look out for them.

2009-05-31T20:13:00.005+09:30

STAR FLEET DIRECTIVE 104-SPOILER: The following blog post contains a summary of events that occured in the latest Star Trek movie. If you are a Star Trek fan and haven't seen the movie yet, stop reading now. If you are a Star Trek fan and you do manage to stop reading, you are obviously not completely human. Report to Star Fleet headquarters at once to have that alien parasite removed from your brainstem.

I would have placed the following under a fold, but unfortunately, due to a HTML error, attempting to put a fold in a Blogger page results in a fold in the space time continuum. I asked Scotty about the situation and he said, "She canne take it anymore! She's gonna blow!" Unfortunately I didn't know if he was talking about the internet, the Enterprise or Kirk's latest girlfriend.

SPOILER ALERT! -- SPOILER ALERT! -- SPOILER ALERT!

STARFLEET: James T. Kirk, could you tell us in your own words how you saved Earth?

KIRK: Certainly. After Vulcan was destroyed I disobeyed my comanding officer until he threw me off the ship. Then I reboarded the ship without permission and taunted the Captain about his dead mother until he had a mental breakdown. Then I took control of the ship. I can't believe I got away with that. Then, instead of beaming some nukes or photon torpedoes or our anti-matter filled reactor core over to the enemy Romulan ship, I beamed just myself and a guy who had just mental break down and had tried to kill me. I thought it would help us to bond. We shot a dozen Romulans and were able to evade the rest because Romulans have no concept of waste space. Then Spock stole a ship and got the Romulans to chase him away from the earth while I rescued Captain Pike. Fortunately we had enough time to do this as the Romulans didn't realize that a black hole on the surface of a planet will destroy it just as much as one in its core. Then all we had to do was crash a ship full of black hole juice into the Romulan ship and quite possibly cause it to get sucked through time again. Then Scotty ejected the warp core to propel us away from the black hole because going into orbit is for sissies. Scotty often uses a similar technique using a stick of dynamite to get his chevy into or out of difficult parking spaces. And that's about it.

STARFLEET: Kirk, you are a risk taking idiot who somehow managed to get lucky. As such, we have no problem handing over one of earth's few remaining starships to your command. We'll even let you choose as second in command a man who tried to strangle you to death on the bridge and who is having a relationship with a woman you have been stalking for three years. We forsee no possible negative consequences from this at all.

The Heritage Foundation is Lying About the Cost of the Waxman-Markey Carbon Trading Bill

2009-05-31T14:13:00.007+09:30

The Heritage Foundation in the United States has produced a report saying that the carbon emission trading scheme currently under consideration, which will reduce CO2 emissions by about 1.8% annually, will cost the average American family $1,500 US a year, apparently for the next forty years.

This is a load of dingos' kidneys. I know that this is a load of dingos' kidneys because with $1,500 a year the average American family could afford to cut their CO2 emissions by a heck of a lot than 1.8% a year. For example they could buy insulation, install a geothermal heat pump, purchase a hybrid or a plug in hybrid when their old car needs replacing, install solar panels and or a micro wind turbine or fuel cell. Plant trees, add biochar and powdered olivine to the garden, etc. Note that most of these actions will actually save money and leave the family better off. But according to the Heritage Foundation a carbon trading scheme, which is a method of cutting carbon emissions at the lowest cost, will somehow end up costing families $1,500 a year with no benefit. These dingo’s kidneys are fetid. I’m astounded that the Heritage Foundation can still find people willing to gobble them up.

The Heritage Foundation is lying. They are not just stupid, otherwise I would expect their mistakes to be in random directions rather than always in the, “Carbon dioxide is fun and who needs icecaps anyway?” direction. It is not necessary to consciously lie to be a liar. All that is required when you are writing something you are passing off as an authoritative report is not to perform necessary intellectual hygiene. For example, do I have all the facts? Have I run this by someone who actually knows what they are talking about? Could some 12 your old with aspergers tear me a new one on this? And so on.

That's right! I used to have a blog.

2009-05-31T14:09:00.004+09:30

Well, what do you know? The deep hypnosis combined with dropping acid worked. (That is, a 25 kilogram bag of tartaric acid dropping on my head.) I now recall the password to my blog.

Stupid Science Limricks written by me.

2007-06-03T17:52:00.000+09:30

After his mind was let loose,
Steven Hawkings was soon to deduce,
An interesting fact,
That holes that are black,
Are really actually puce.

A women helped Watson and Crick,
Discover DNA's trick,
But she got in the way,
Of radiation they say,
And died before fame could stick.

Pascal enjoyed a bit of a wager,
But at logic he wasn't a major,
He should have known well,
That praying could send you to hell,
Instead of being the thing to save ya.

Doctor Spock saved children from tears,
By saying not to exploit their fears,
But it is such a shame,
That when I mention his name,
People think he should have pointy ears.

There was a young man named Teller,
Who was a strange sort of a feller,
A man's reputation was busted,
When he said Oppenheimer couldn't be trusted,
And implied he was both red and yeller.

Professer Haber was a Noble prize winner,
For his invention stops people getting thinner,
But many met their doom,
When used to make things that go boom,
And not just to grow food for dinner.

A lass thought Pythagoras cute,
And dated him just for a hoot,
Althoughs she thought he was nice,
Her passion soon turned to ice,
Because she didn't enjoy the square root.

Flemming discovered some mould,
That happened to be medical gold,
He said, "Patents are bunk!"
But his discovery sunk,
Until World War II took hold.

The Solution to Quite a Few of the World's Problems!

2007-05-20T04:15:00.000+09:30

Global temperatures are rising, oil supplies are dwindling, Presidents are getting people killed. What do all these problems have in common? They can all be solved through my simple solution to make the world a better place. My plan is simple. It involves reintroducing the codpiece as a fashion statement. Just think, if codpieces became fashionable again, no one would ever have to buy an SUV. They could just go and buy a huge, honking, chrome plated codpiece and get exactly the same amount of satisfaction from it as from driving one of those enormous, 4-wheel-drive, continental siege machines. No one would ever feel the need to buy a gas-guzzler again, provided the dash of the Honda Civic was modified to allow larger sized codpieces to fit. And the entire Iraq invasion could have been avoided if only George Bush had been permitted to wear the world’s largest codpiece - sixty foot long, matt black and made of carbon fiber. Sure it might take a squad of young men running alongside to support its weight, but it’s better for a young man to strain his back to supporting the Presidental penis then it is for a young man to get shot because of the lack of Presidential penis.

Signs of the Singularity

2007-05-01T23:20:00.000+09:30

When computers are easy to use, the singularity will have arrived.

Converesly, computers say that when humans are easy to use the singularity will have arrived.

The movie 300 - So bad it's good.

2007-05-01T22:34:00.000+09:30

Hi! I’m in a good mood today. I just went and saw a cartoon at the movies. Not an actual animated cartoon, but a live action one. Frank Miller’s movie 300 about the Spartans at the battle of Thermopylae.

It's a weird movie. Apparently Spartan men went bare-chested while Spartan women didn’t. And when I say Spartan men went bare-chested, I mean they went bare-chested always, even in the middle of battle, which is a big no-no. Even the most tactically inept person knows it’s not a good idea to go into battle sans clobber, unless your enemy has a pathological fear of nudity. The screen is filled with so much beefcake it made me wish I could take a pill to turn me gay for a couple of hours so I’d enjoy it more. There is a scene which shows King Leonidas having sex with his wife, which I guess is some pathetic attempt to establish that he’s not gay. Let’s just say it’s not successful. A non-gay king would insist his soldiers wear armour.

And damn, but the Spartans were short in that movie. At the start there is a wolf that is much larger than King Leonidas and Emporer Xerces simply towers over him. But that’s what happens when you abuse your children by sending them out to survive in the wilderness as part of the traditional Agoge instead of actually, you know, feeding them and maybe training them in how to survive instead of just expecting them to work it out by themselves. Imagine how tough the Spartans would have been if they'd actually fed their children and hadn’t all been midgets.

In the movie’s first battle I thought we might see a demonstration of what happens when disorganized warriors run up against a disciplined, well drilled army. However, despite King Leonidas giving a lecture to Mickey the Mutant on the art of phalanx fighting earlier on, it turns out that that Spartans aren’t really into forming ranks and holding position, and are actually iron age Jedi and fight best when surrounded by enemies and spinning like violent gyroscopes. After seeing his son killed, one character is described as breaking ranks. What ranks? The Spartans were standing wherever they would look the coolest, not where they had a tactical advantage. And I can only assume that the son who was killed was extremely good at lip-reading because only a severely deaf person would let a galloping horse sneak up on them.

As for historical accuracy, there is none. Basically, if it’s in the movie, it’s wrong. Although I suppose it is remotely possible that Xerces the Great had a goat that could play musical instruments. However, the movie never gives the impression that it’s trying to be historically accurate. It gives the impression that it’s a live action cartoon, which is a good thing, otherwise I’d have to point out how humorous it is to hear the slave owning Spartans saying they are fighting for freedom.

KING LEONIDAS: We are fighting for freedom!

HELOT: Does this mean we are no longer slaves and can now own the fruits of our own labour and no longer have to kiss your arses?

KING LEONIDAS: I’m not talking about that sort of freedom!

But then I suppose freedom might be especially dear to people who can see how poorly they treat their own slaves everyday. And I’d also have to mention that it wasn't really the Spartans but their rivals the Athenians who defeated Xerces, but now I’m just quibbling over minor details. Basically, people who know anything at all about ancient history will realise the movie is not accurate and the people who go into the movie knowing nothing will come out knowing nothing, so no harm done.

So, all up, a bad movie, but an excellent cartoon.

Ray Kurzweil can snap most people's limbs like dry twigs

2007-04-08T22:25:00.000+09:30

Picking on Ray Kurzweil is probably not a good idea. I mean, the guy is pretty fit and so tough he doesn't even flinch when he has injections. In fact, he even seems to enjoy them. He boasts about having them in his book. Worse than that, he could probably kill someone with the right power chord from his synthesizer. The sonic blast could turn your bones to jelly. Which could have its advantages, if you didn't have to pull on your own nipples all the time to stop your lungs collapsing, which is kind of hard to do when you no longer have bones in your arms.

Anyway, the point is that I am extremely brave because I am now going to pick on Ray Kurzweil's ideas on the internet where he could theoretically find out about it. This is very fool hardy of me. After all, who knows what horrors he might inflict upon me after the singularity? Maybe swap my virtual reality Angelina Jolie image file with Margaret Thatcher's right in the middle of a hot and heavy philosophical discussion session.

Anyway, in his book, The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil says he thinks humans are the only intelligence in the galaxy or perhaps universe. He thinks we’re the only ones around because he says it’s natural for intelligence to spread through the universe and spread, well, intelligence. Since there is no sign that anyone has done that yet he concludes we’re the only intelligence around.

To me, this isn’t a good argument. It could be that the reason we haven’t detected signs of technology in space such as Dyson spheres is because aliens think that idea of spreading intelligence through the universe is so late 20th century and have much better things to do with their time. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that there were people who thought that destroying all wilderness until the entire earth was paved over was a good idea. Nowadays when we read about how our grandparents looked forward to the day when all those nasty lions, dingos, Tasmanian Tigers, indigenous inhabitants and so on would finally be extinct; many people are disgusted. I think it is possible that in the future intellects might feel the same way about spreading intelligence through the universe willy-nilly.

Kurzweil says that intelligence should spread through the universe rapidly. Well maybe an intelligence did spread through the universe rapidly and it’s an intelligence that likes the universe the way it currently is. And it uses the massive advantage of being the first intergalactic species to squash or co-opt any new species that might pop up and want to do things differently. And the reason we haven’t seen any sign of this uber intelligence is because it doesn’t give a damn about contacting us. I mean when was the last time you tried to communicate with an ant? Sure you might watch ‘em in an ant farm, but you don’t have high hopes of engaging in interesting conversation with them.

Well, I'd better finish up by saying something nice about the book so Ray Kurzweil won't come and rip my bloody arms and legs off like an intellectual Aunty Jack. One thing I appreciated was that he didn't say anything too silly about deflation in the book. Deflation is a problem when the general price level decreases. It's not a problem if the prices of certain goods such as computers decreas. And if we do end up with Kurzweilian deflation it's easily fixed. Governments can simply stop collecting taxes and start introducing negative poll taxes and just give everyone money to prevent problems caused by currency gaining in value.

Book Review: A Teaspoon and an Open Mind - The Science of Doctor Who

2007-04-08T18:53:00.001+09:30

What the heck? I'm up to page 26 and I am astounded by the scientific inaccuracies. And I'm not talking about the science in Doctor Who, I'm talking about the real life science this guy is writing about. I go to the front of the book and I see the author, Michael White, has written a lot of books before involving science so it's not as if we have an over ernest fan here who doesn't know what he is talking about. I'm hoping that there was some enormous slip up in the editing process, but it seems more likely that this book is crap.

UPDATE: I read a few more pages. It's crap.

Velocoraptors Smarter than Humans - Conclusive Fictional Proof

2007-04-08T18:32:00.000+09:30

It's very interesting to note that if you take a normal door and move the handle from the usual place and instead put it in one of the corners, most humans on earth will either be unable to open the door or spend an inordinate amount of time working it out. Yet the velociraptors in Jurassic Park, who presumably had never operated doors before, seemed to have no real problem at all. This makes me think that the chiczulub crater wasn't the result of an asteroid impacting the earth and killing off the dinosaurs. It was the result of a velociraptor being smart.

Run for your lives! The Singularity is coming!

2007-03-28T11:10:00.000+09:30

I’ve been reading a book by Ray Kurzweil called, The Singularity is Near. And no, the singularity does not consist entirely of Ray Kurzweil giving you a single finger. The singularity is supposed to be when the accelerating advance of human knowledge and technology reaches such a fevered pace that it skyrockets and our lives are completely transformed from what they were before. Kurzweil says this will happen around 2045. Only 38 more years. Sounds like we’d better enjoy our ignorance and technical incompetence while we can.

Now these ideas aren’t exactly new. They’ve been causing trouble for thousands of years. There have always been people who have said that if you follow their teachings (carefully prolong your life until immortality is invented) you will get to heaven (immersive virtual reality where you can do it with Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or a combination of the two, Brad Jolie.) However, this particular nutty prophet is actually right about a few things, which puts him a little ahead of Jesus or Muhammad or Jeshammad.

Ray Kurzweil is typically portrayed as being insanely optimistic, but I actually agree with a lot of what he says. Human knowledge and technological progress is advancing at an accelerating rate. But I’m not too impressed by his prediction that we’ll all become immortal in the future. I mean look at the people around you and the ones you encounter online. Do you really want to be stuck with these people forever? You might say that it doesn’t matter, that you’ll spend all your time in virtual reality doing it with Brad Jolie, but there are people out there who aren’t going to be satisfied until you’re doing it with Jeshammad.

I don’t know if advances will come to pass as early as he says they will, but on one point at least he is much more pessimistic than I am. He says a machine won’t be able to accurately mimic human intelligence and pass a Turing test until about 2029. I think the date is much more likely to be next week sometime. Trust me on this, it only takes a minimal amount of computing power to mimic my cousin Andy:

TEST GIVER: What are you thinking about right now?
ANDY SIMULATION: Beer.
TEST GIVER: Anything else.
ANDY SIMULATION: Nah. Just beer.
TEST GIVER: Not sex?
ANDY SIMULATION: Are you a chick?
TEST GIVER: I’m a woman.
ANDY SIMULATION: Will you get all shitty if I tell the truth?
TEST GIVER: No, I won’t get all shitty if you tell the truth.
ANDY SIMULATION: Mostly beer, sometimes sex.
TEST GIVER: What would you say if I said that life was a constant conflict between what we aspire to be and our recognition of what we really are?
ANDY SIMULATION: Show us your tits.
TEST GIVER: All right then, we’ll try a different tack. You are walking in the desert. The sun is beating down on you. You come across a tortoise lying on it’s back in the sun. The tortoise can’t move. Its little legs are helplessly waving in the air. You could help this tortoise, but…
ANDY SIMULATION: Is it male or female?
TEST GIVER: It doesn’t really matter.
ANDY SIMULATION: Is it the male of its species, or the female?
TEST GIVER: It’s… it’s male.
ANDY SIMULATION: Fuck it then. I kick it.

As you can see, not a lot of computer power required there. In fact, I myself have written a computer program that is as intelligent as Einstein and I’m willing to put it through the Turing test right now. I’ll ask questions to two subjects. One of the subjects will be my computer program and the other will be the real Einstein. It’s your challenge to tell them apart.

ME: Thank you both for participating in this test. First I’d like to ask you both how you feel today?
SUBJECT 1: (Silence)
SUBJECT 2: (Silence)
ME: In your opinion, what would you say are the characteristics that truly define humanity?
SUBJECT 1: (Silence)
SUBJECT 2: (Silence) (Rotting smell.)
ME: Do you believe in Cartesian duality? That there is something about being human that cannot be captured and replicated by a machine no matter how well it is able to simulate the functioning of the human brain?
SUBJECT 1: (Silence)
SUBJECT 2: (Silence) (Fly lands on skull, crawls into eye socket.)
ME: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
SUBJECT 1: (Silence)
SUBJECT 2: (Silence) (Worm emerges from rotting suit, falls on carpet.)
ME: Thank you for your time, gentlemen.

So, could you tell them apart? I bet it wasn’t as easy to as you thought it would be.

I couldn’t be bothered to write about my lack of enthusiasm…

2007-03-27T21:19:00.000+09:30

I haven’t done any work at all today. Not unless you get really imaginative with the definition of the word work. Even my dreams weren’t particularly productive this morning. They were just about how the dingier restaurants in Japan are better value for money, me discovering a good luck cat charm and a collection of novelty decoratred eggs in the gutter and my obtaining my own flat while still a high school student and deciding that I could learn more by staying at home and reading rather than attending school.

It’s funny that although I have travelled the world, battled blood sucking diseased monsters, been savagely hurled through the air and cruelly injured by mechanical monstrosities, and have sat through the entirety of Highlander 2, but my worst nightmares still involve high school. But then too this day I have still not faced anything as horrific as high school. I’m not saying that it was as bad as gutting fish for 12 hours a day, but it would have been nice to have had that option.

Not that I had any nightmares last night, but there was nothing that was obviously money making. No award winning songs, no great inventions, no locations to secret buried treasures. (Not that people ever let me dig deep enough into their living room floors before they call the police.) So basically there is no way I can claim to have done work.

It seems that for some strange reason I’m just generally reluctant to do work.

So from now on I’ve decided to only take on projects that engage my enthusiasm. If I feel like working on projects involving space travelling bonobos or nanobot chimpanzees, then gosh darn it, I’ll work on those projects! Instead of working on things I want to work on, I’ve been getting myself all twisted out of shape worring about things like artistic merit, taste, coherence, legality and making any kind of sense what so ever. Well all that’s going out the window and I pity those poor fools who get hit by the pointy triangles of coherence! The world is going to see a new me, and I’m not talking about a clone I grew in a vat! A new productive me that will cast off the shackles of convention! A me that won’t be held back or hampered by self imposed…

Is that the time? I’d better be getting to bed. I’ll finish this later. Well I would, except having to finish it later makes it seem a bit like work, and as I may have mentioned, I’m not too motivated about doing work…

The Brothel of my Dreams

2007-03-25T07:42:00.001+09:30

I actually had a decent night’s sleep last night. It’s been a long time since that’s happened. I dreamed I went to a brothel. I was in a large waiting room with quite a few other people when a woman walked in and it was announced that my lady of the night was ready for me, even though it was the daytime. My prostitute was very sweet and I thought I was very lucky to be selected for her.

We went for a walk to the park together and sat under a tree so we could get to know each other better. I’m not sure if they do this at real brothels, but I suppose they must otherwise how would the prostitutes know if they wanted to sleep with their client or not? Well, we got on just fine, so we headed back to the brothel for sex. My prostitute got into bed and I was about to get into the bed also when everything faded out on account of how this was a PG rated dream. When I woke up in the morning I was sleeping in another room of the Brothel and I wondered if I had to pay extra for staying the night. I had been woken up by the noise, as apparently prostitutes are quite loud in the morning.

I put on my clothes but I couldn’t find my wallet or keys. I figured I must have left them somewhere in the brothel. I didn’t think they had been stolen because if you can’t trust prostitutes who can you trust?

I walked around the brothel looking for them, nodding hello to the prostitutes I passed, when I entered a small room and a prostitute entered after me and said she would have sex with me for $70. I explained that I had lost my wallet and she said that $50 was okay. Apparently this prostitute accepted I.O.U.s. Her wanting to have sex with me made me think two things. One, I must be a handsome, sexy guy if so many prostitutes want to have sex with me. And two, it was economically normal behaviour for people to attempt to avoid extraction of rents by people such as the brothel owners.

Then everything faded out again. I was actually confused about whether or not we’d had sex similar to how it can be hard to tell if people have had sex in some older movies.

Well, I couldn’t find my wallet or keys, so I had to spend another night at the brothel on account of how I couldn’t drive home. The next day I gave up and started to walk home and on the way I met my parents in a swamp I was passing through. They were both quite pleased to hear that I was on my way home from a brothel.

Actually I left out the part of my dream where I was looking for my wallet and I walked into a room with a large indoor swimming pool. There was a group of athletic men wearing swimming costumes at one end and they asked me if I would pay $200 for sex. I thought about what a lovely person my prostitute had been and said that $200 for sex was definitely worth it. Then they all started chasing after me and I had to run for my life. I didn’t mention this in case people took it the wrong way and thought I was some sort of swimmerphobe or something.

Waiting for the comments to come flooding in.

2007-03-24T22:53:00.000+10:30

I promised that today in an attempt to boost my popularity I would give the answer the following question:

WHY DID PRINCE CHARLES CUT OFF HIS WILLY?

Well, when Prince William was younger he was enjoying himself much more than Charles did at that age and Charles decided he wasn’t going to stand for it and cut off his allowance. Well, some of it anyway, for a period of time. It wasn’t as if he was going to make his own son live like a normal person or anything.

Boring Dailly Trivia of my Life

2007-03-24T08:44:00.000+10:30

8:52am

Woke up,
Got out of bed,
Didn’t drag a comb across my head...

I’ve decided that what my blog needs to increase its readership above one (hi mum!) is more boring day to day trivia. That’s what a lot of other blogs have. Really boring, mindless crap. So rather than my usual insightful, intellectual pronouncements I will tell you the details of my fascinating life.

So far this morning I have woken up, turned on the computer, urinated and thrown my underpants in the wash. Yes, that’s right. Soon I’ll be able to have all the accidents I want.

So, what to do now? Can’t seem to really focus at the moment. I shouldn’t be tired, I only just got up… Ah! I’ve got it! I must be hungry! I’ll have breakfast! Time to go see what’s in the fridge.

Well, that was pleasant. I had a small amount of maize, a brussel sprout, navy beans, army beans, a green bean and a vegetable that I have decided to call styrofoam. Although putatively healthy, it didn’t really hit the spot, which is surprising because I have an excessively large spot. Must remember to go food shopping today.

So, what to do today, what to do? Well, I could clean up the place a bit. Broadening my definition of both rubbish bin and filing cabinet to include the concept of floor does seem to have resulted in a small amount of disorganisation. But is it really fair on the rest of the world for me to waste my huge intellect performing such a menial task? I don’t really think so. And besides, think of all the carbon I’m sequestering by not taking out the rubbish.

Let’s see, I have some DVDs I can watch and some books I can read. I could actually like, you know, leave the house and do something. Spend some of the huge quantity of money I have on doing something fun. Hmmm… Pity I can’t think of anything. I mean, why bother? Basically, when people say they are having fun they are just going places and seeing things and doing things. Well I can go places in my own house and see and do things here as well. What’s the point in leaving? I mean, it’s not as if I’m going to meet anyone who is more interesting to talk to than myself, right?

Well, if I’m not going to clean up the place and I’m not going to read or watch DVDs I guess I’d better do some work. Yes work. No, it’s okay, don’t be alarmed, I’ve actually worked before. It’s a strange compulsion I have. I actually believe that my life will be better if I actually do something with it. It’s all rather odd I know, but there you have it. Well, let's get to work.

No, wait a minute! There could be monkey jokes on the internet!

No monkey jokes. Well that was a waste of 23 minutes. But I did meet a guy who denies that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. I suggested he write a paper on it and get a noble prize for revolutionising physics, but he said it wasn’t worth the effort because it would just be suppressed by evil scientists who are using the lie that carbon dioxide absorbs infrared radiation in the 2.7, 4.3 and 15 micron bands to conquer the world. I asked him where the monkey jokes were, but he didn’t know. Well, I guess I better get to work then. Unless of course the monkey jokes are hiding among the gorilla jokes!

No, no they weren’t. Two more minutes wasted. Okay, to work now. Um, let’s see open file. Look at file. Oooh, symbols! It’s almost as if it’s some kind of language. Yes, yes… I know what this is. It’s English. Or rather, monkey English! Or it will be once I’m done improving it! No! No! Must resist temptation. These people want American English, not monkey English. Must resist temptation to OOOK EEEK! Must gain payment and professional recognition… So hard to resist the siren lure of monkey English…

Okay, I’m better now. What am I working on again? Oh yeah, medical stuff. What to do if your head comes off etc. Well I’ll get stuck into it.

Inflatable Domestic Abuse

2007-03-23T21:43:00.000+10:30

Well, the next door neighbour is shouting at his wife again. You know, it’s just not fair. If I had a wife I wouldn’t shout at her like that, so why does he have a wife and I don’t? Maybe I'm just too humble when it comes to informing potential mates of how wonderful I am. But actually, now that I think of it, I’ve never actually seen his wife. He might not have one for all I know. He could well be shouting at an inflatable doll. Yeah, he’s probably even sadder than I am. Imagine, shouting at an inflatable doll. What a tosser.

You know, if I had an inflatable doll, I wouldn’t shout at it like that.

Slight Exaggeration?

2007-03-23T13:05:00.000+10:30

Am I the only one who thinks the current U.S. government exaggerates the internal threat from terrorists just a teensy weensy bit? I mean they go totally berserk when they think they have discovered a single Al Qaeda cell. Imagine what would happen if they actually found an Al Qaeda organ, or heaven forbid, an entire Al Qaeda body. But no, just a cell is enough to freak them out. I guess they must be worried about that terrorist DNA, although I tend to think that more attention should be payed to the environmental factors that cause it to be expressed.

Self mutilation is what makes this blog popular.

2007-03-23T10:57:00.000+10:30

Judging from the number of comments I've received, the most popular post I've ever written was two sentences on why Van Gough cut off his left ear. I will try to replicate the success of that post tomorrow when I will answer the question:

WHY DID PRINCE CHARLES CUT OFF HIS WILLY?

Sugar and Spice and Puppy Dog Tails and Apes.

2007-03-22T13:24:00.000+10:30

In the book, Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal discusses some interesting social differences between the sexes in apes. When human ape children were observed in the playground, boys were recorded as getting into twice as many fights as girls. However, when the children where asked at the end of the day how many fights they had been in, both the boys and the girls reported about the same number on average. It appears that disputes between girls can be far more subtle and less obvious than between boys.

I certainly noticed this when my friend gave me a book to read about the adventures of a girl in a boarding school. I found reading the thing very hard going. I was there going, “Well if being snubbed by this other girl hurts you so much, why don’t you just slay her? Or failing that, defeat her in physical combat and drive her before you while listening to the lamentations of her social cliche? Or you could just poison her. You’ve already mentioned how you were getting top marks in chemistry.”

Fortunately for the homicide rate, girls don't opt for violent solutions as often as boys. A wise man once said that violence never solves anything, but he quit saying it after the other guys punched his face in a few times.

Boys also appear to be much quicker to forgive each other after a dispute than girls. Admittedly this is often just so they can join forces and beat up some other boys, but it is a real difference. Girls seem to work much harder at avoiding disputes, but are worse at ending them once they start.

So, does this mean that as women gain more position of political power the world will be more likely to avoid most conflict but when conflict does occur it will be more intractable?

No. Countries that have women gaining positions of political power are generally sensible ones where one person’s grudge isn’t allowed to get people killed. I can’t think of a single developed country where a political leader’s personal vendetta would be allowed to substantially alter policy.

Okay, okay, I can’t think of two developed countries where a political leader’s personal vendetta would be allowed to substantially alter policy.

Nicotine - very, very bad!

2007-03-20T11:17:00.000+10:30

Here's something I didn't know. It's possible for a young child to die from nicotine poisoning after eating a single cigarette butt. That's pretty toxic. In fact, a lethal dose of nicotine is 20 times smaller than a lethal dose of cocaine. This suggests that people should be more careful with cigarettes around children, but strangely enough it appears that seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple is more dangerous for children than seeing people smoke. Strange that. You'd think young children wouldn’t mind nipples at all.

Anyway, nicotine is supposed to be toxic. When insects eat tobacco plants they die from the nicotine. It's a form of chemical warfare. It's just chance that it also happens to be an addictive stimulant for mammals. Back in my grandfather's day you could buy nicotine in a tin to use as an insecticide. But they ended up banning it on account of how people had a tendency to use it to gain inheritances, get rid of annoying family members and so on. How typical of interfering bureaucrats to get in the way of innovation in family management! Gardeners also had a tendency to wake up anxious and irritable with an almost uncontrollable urge to go and kill aphids.

Oh, and apparently the majority of people with schizophrenia smoke. Not sure what's going on there. It may be an attempt to self medicate in much the same way as most people who suffer from work drink coffee.

I am not a racist.

2007-03-19T16:51:00.000+10:30

It appears that I have managed to upset some people with my previous post. I have even been accused by some imaginary people of being a racist. It appears these pretend people were not impressed with the example I gave of a Dutchman attempting to communicate in English in my previous post. I have been told that I have made an ethnic slur against Dutch people everywhere, that I should be ashamed of myself for blackening the name of such a tolerant and kind people and that no one in the Netherlands ever speaks like that, except for filthy Brabanders.

I would like to apologize for any offence I may have inadvertently caused (without actually apologizing for the act itself). In the spirit of reconciliation I would like to quote the great actor Michael Caine, who said, "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch."

Hmm. Maybe quoting Michael Caine wasn't the brightest idea I've ever had. Oh well.

Book Review: Our Inner Ape by Frans de Waal

2007-03-18T19:28:00.000+10:30

This book didn’t start well for me. Near the beginning Frans disses The Selfish Gene, a book by the man of my dreams, Richard Dawkins. (In my dream Dawkins had me hide a dead lobster in my mouth so we could photocopy it as evidence of cruelty to invertebrates.) It seemed as though Frans de Waal hadn’t understood what Dwarkins was saying at all. But I’ll be charitable and put it down to misunderstanding. Frans is from the Netherlands and there is a lot of misunderstanding between the Dutch and English because the languages are so similar. Indeed, the two languages are exactly the same except for where they are different. It creates the illusion that Dutch and English speakers actually understand each other when frequently nothing could be further from the truth. I’ll give an example from my own experience of a Dutchman attempting to communicate with me:

“Yesterday I got up in the middle of the night. I made some sausage rolls. I made one, two, tree, four, five, sex. They were all the same length except some were longer than others. What? Why are laughing at me? You think I’m a stupid Dutchman, don’t you? You think I know fucking nothing. Well let me tell you, I know fuck all!”

I was very interested to read about the politics of apes, I wasn’t so interested in occasional asides into the politics of studying apes. After reading about how obsessed chimps are with status it’s almost impossible to not reflect on Frans’s apparent concern with it himself.

But it is good to read about Chimpanzee and Bonobo interaction. That is, interaction between chimps and other chimps and bonobos and other bonobos. I’m not sure exactly what happens when chimps and bonobos are put in the same enclosure and allowed to interact. Indeed I’m sure we could get a sitcom premise out of it with a talking chimp and a talking bonobo being forced to share an apartment and the hilarious hijinks that occur when their families come to visit. Not quite sure how American viewers will react to a typical bonobo orgy, but as long as we don’t show a nipple belonging to a member of the Jackson family I’m sure everything will be fine.

Interesting points in the book:

Bonobo sex acts last for about 14 seconds.
South American Capuchins have brain to body ratios equal to that of chimps and may be the most intelligent of monkeys.
Monkeys don’t comfort other monkeys, but apes comfort other apes.
If a bonobo kisses you, be prepared for tongue.

So in conclusion, a good read, but you might have to cut Frans de Waal some slack when he starts to get over concerned with status and starts acting like some sort of human.

Filthy Clicking Things

2007-03-17T11:47:00.000+10:30

Hey,I'm allowed back onto my blog!

But I'm not proud of what I had to do to get here.

I had to click on things. Which is just disgusting. My cursor is soaking in bleach right now. I was wearing a read/write protect tab at the time, but still, clicking on things on the internet is a disgusting thing to do. Who knows where those buttons have been or whose been clicking on them and what they were doing with their cursor before they clicked them? I feel so cheap and tawdry. I should be feeling expensive and tawdry. Anyway, I just wanted you to know what I'm willing to go through for my reader out there. Hi, mum.

Perhaps

2006-12-28T16:14:00.000+10:30

One day nations will fear looking stupid as much as they currently fear looking weak.

George Bush Explained!

2006-11-25T09:00:00.000+10:30

If you have been following the United States foreign policy over the past six years, you have my sympathy. And no doubt the actions of their president have made you think, "What the hell is he doing?" (If you haven't thought this I suggest you go and read a book on cost/benefit analysis, or history, or indeed just a book.) But after reading a Ray Bradbury story I believe I now understand what's happened. Obviously someone has travelled back in time to the Cretaceous and stepped on a butterfly. As a result we are now in one of those weird timelines where history is all screwed up for no adequately explained reason. Now all we need is an etomologist, a microsurgeon and a time machine to make things right.