Friday, December 29, 2006

kyoto lies


The Federal Govt keeps proudly saying we're not going to sign Kyoto protocol *but* we're going to meet the target anyway. I downloaded Tracking to the Kyoto Target and saw an interesting breakdown. Australia banned land clearing in large areas of Queensland and counts this against increased CO2 emissions from other sources. So our CO2 emissions are about 38% above 1990 levels but through some clever calculations the govt reduces that to 9% because we're not clearing Queensland anymore.

nuclear report notes

Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy – Opportunities for Australia?


Terms of reference are key to Howards reports. The Cole report into AWB paying $300 million to Saddam Hussain was framed so that the governments culpability in the affair was not to be investigated.

Appendix A. 1 Economic Issues (c)
Howard: "The extent and circumstances in which
nuclear energy could in the longer term
be economically competitive in Australia
with other existing electricity generation
technologies, including any implications
this would have for the national
electricity market."

Key findings of the Report (page. 2)
Ziggy: Nuclear power is likely to be between 20 and 50 per cent more costly to produce than
power from a new coal-fired plant at current
fossil fuel prices in Australia. This gap may
close in the decades ahead, but nuclear
power, and renewable energy sources,
are only likely to become competitive in
Australia in a system where the costs of
greenhouse gas emissions are explicitly
recognised. Even then, private investment
in the first-built nuclear reactors may
require some form of government support
or directive.

So nuclear power is expensive. So is solar and wind power.
What if Chernobyl had been a wind farm?
What do solar power stations do with their waste?
Why are solar and wind not suggested as preferable options? Because the terms of reference did not include comparing with other options.



Appendix S. Depleted Uranium

Several submissions to the Review argued
that exposure to depleted uranium, including
depleted uranium weapons, is responsible for
severe health effects. The conclusions of these
submissions are not supported by experts in
the health physics community in Australia
and overseas.

This goes against what I've read. Need to investigate.

Depleted uranium sourced from Australian
uranium is covered by Australia’s nuclear
safeguards requirements and cannot be
used for any military application.

I don't trust that this is the case.

nuclear report

On the day the Prime Ministers report on whether Australia should have nuclear power stations was released I read the following:


PRIME Minister John Howard has stepped up the case for nuclear power, telling reporters the Government would be "crazy in the extreme" if it blocked the development of nuclear energy in Australia.

URANIUM stocks are finishing the year with a flourish in response to soaring prices for the radioactive material.

Australian PM asks states to allow more uranium exports

The report is available here. I'll read it so you don't have to.

no ice please



The Melbourne Age reports "A giant ice shelf the size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free from Canada's Arctic, scientists said.

The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north."

My first thought was, "hey, here come the four horseman of the apocalypse" but then...

Um. It's meant to be a newspaper. Did it really take scientists 16 months to notice this? Or is it being mentioned now for a reason?

Friday, December 22, 2006

alternative ending for braveheart

Stewart Lee and Richard Herring from The Richard Not Judy Show

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

bad boy bloggy

redirecting my thought stream to the blog so someone can get some work done:


Ovum Consulting - i can't imagine how you would do this

mufti - does any one else find this word funny? This guy doesn't but he's not so sheik these days.

Friday, November 24, 2006

body rollin'

Now I want hand, knee and chest skates!

Sunday, November 05, 2006

what happens to lost dogs?

update! He was adopted on 18th November. I'm really happy about that.















Yesterday at the park we found a dog without an owner so we brought him home. No-one answered the adverts I posted so the next day we took him to the vet so they could scan him for a microchip id.

He didn't have one and the vet told me they had to hand him over to the council.

Friday, September 08, 2006

who goes to an accoustic gig to talk? a solution

one of the nice things about discovering artists before they get too popular (or die) is that the people at gigs don't suck. they're the early adopters, storm chasers, people with passion. we're here to hear, not make ourselves heard. the smaller the gig, the more intimate, the less likely you'll have to filter out the verbal diahoreah of some wanker who thinks what he has to say to his mate is more important that what the performer we've all come to see does.

but what I've noticed is that even in small room gigs where you have to know someone to be there, with a single artist on stage and the audience hanging on every word, there'll still be two or three voices competing for my attention. who are these areholes? and what can we do about them? well, i got a solution.

woke up this morning and got myself a gun. a water gun.


Friday, August 11, 2006

find a girl who fits

So I worked out how to tell when I meet a girl who's right for me.

I'm not going to give away key to my new heuristic in my blog just in case some hussy tries to game me. But c'mon who's going to go to that effort to be with me? Probably no-one right now but in the future when I'm good looking or rich or powerful or word has gotten out about my extra optical inch I could regret being so forthcoming about my achilles heel. Anyway, suffice to say I've worked it out and would be happy to tell you but not through my blog.

One problem is that friends might not turn out to be that good at picking people I would like because the external signs can be misleading. A girl who watches Big Brother up late might be ruled out by my friends. What they might not realize is that I liked watching Big Brother up late to watch Mike Goldman's antics. It's just not something I tend to tell people - they wouldn't understand. Like Daniel Kitson said, you don't like someone for what they like, but rather the reason they like those things.

Oh, and if I really like a girl she becomes better looking. It can happen in the space of hours and is really handy! There are limits to how far this magic can stretch of course but it works. I've realized picking a hot looking girl and then trying to meet and get to know her is like picking the best looking pair of shoes in the store and then trying them on. You deliberate for ages, agonizing over which ones look best and have half made up your mind before you even try a pair on. I've bought shoes that have hurt me because I decided they were good looking and told myself they would 'give a bit' over time. So I think a better approach would be to just try on lots of women until you find one that fits and then decide if you look good in her.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

15 minutes work for a free flight

Two weeks after returning from a month abroad I was wondering what to do with my boarding passes. I flew United Airlines and was quite happy with the experience. I decided to see if I could sign up for the frequent flyer program online and claim mileage points for my flights.

You can do this up to 12 months after your flights and you can create the account for free on the web in a couple of minutes. After doing this you can enter the details (date, flight number, etc) from each flight on your trip. I ended up entering the details from the itinerary my travel agent printed out for me and ticking them off as I went.

At the end of that I had 22,439 miles credited to my account. That's enough for a free flight anywhere within Australia. Not a bad reward for 15 minutes investigation!

Thursday, July 27, 2006

I never thought I'd be grateful to ACA


Channels Nine's program, 'A Current Affair' is full of recycled sensationalist populist crap.
The only time I watch is when I am too sick to operate the remote or in this case, was lured
by the possibility of cutting my credit card rate.

ACA tease you with a story, making you wait through the whole inane program just to disappoint you at the end. The teaser went along the lines of "what the banks don't want you to know - how to cut the interest rate on your existing credit cards". The story said that if you call up to cancel your credit card, they will offer to cut your interest rate to keep you.

I called CBA and ANZ however I didn't threaten to cancel my cards. I just asked what rate I was paying and whether there was a lower rate available. It turns out the banks were happy to offer me cards with a lower interest rates.

ANZCBA
Old New Old New
Interest rate18.75%11.99%17.15%10.99%
Annual fee$90.00$58.00$21.00$48.00


When I visited ANZ's site I saw a current promotion to draw consumers attention to their 'low rate' cards. You don't need to shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore". There's a credit card war on and the banks are keen to retain price sensitive customers without lowering the rates across their established products. A.C.A. weren't letting a secret out, they were just alerting the market to some existing credit products on offer.

Still, they've saved me money and for that I am grateful.

Sunday, July 23, 2006

American Sandwich in Melbourne




I want a Chicago Italian Beef Sandwich. I had one in Arizona and now I want to find somewhere in Melbourne that makes them. If there is no-one who can make them in Melbourne then I will have to learn myself.

I may have to resort to following a recipe.

After complaints from readers, I included the image on the right - mainly for readers of TheAge.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Feral Children



Channel 4 did a doco on Feral Children. The Age did a story on Oxana Malaya who was raised by dogs from the age of three. Both sites have a picture of her which appears to have been taken at the on the same occassion. The Channel 4 picture (left) seems less flattering than the one used by The Age. Was her head considered 'too round' for an Australian audience?

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

At last I have a blog


zefrank wants you to execute your ideas ASAP.

PHILIPS want you to shave your balls.