Posts filed under 'Samuel's Editorials'
Caltex successfully convinced me yesterday that they do not use logic when deciding on petrol prices. I was fairly convinced of that already, but they made sure of it yesterday.
According to 2UE’s Tim Webster, all the Caltex stations he passed in Sydney were selling unleaded petrol for 146.9 cents per litre. In Weston yesterday the Caltex Woolworths petrol station were selling unleaded petrol for 139.9 cents per litre, a price which was repeated at another Caltex just off Drakeford Drive. Oddly though, another Caltex near Drakeford Drive was selling it for 143.9 cents per litre.
As for today’s prices…I don’t want to know, as it would only make me try to find logic where this is none.
If only I had a recording of that conversation Glenn Wheeler had with a petrol company spokesperson just before Easter (at least I think it was just before Easter). That was one of the most amusing and confusing conversations I’ve heard and I think Glenn was right when he summed up the petrol company’s explanation as something along the lines of “take a number, divide it by five, add a couple tomatoes, a pineapple, a coconut, and an onion, and hey presto! It’s a perfect petrol price”.
I wonder if it would be more cost effective to buy crude oil and refine it myself?
Samuel
August 19th, 2008 at 01:12pm
As I’ve previously noted, I like to read through the ACT and New South Wales police press releases on a daily basis because there is usually at least one peculiar or slightly amusing story in there…and it’s nice to see the raw version of the more serious stories which manage to make their way in to the mainstream news as it gives me a better understanding of the story. Unfortunately it also has the rather unwanted side-effect of scaring the living daylights out of me at least once every few months:
A driver has died following a motor vehicle collision involving a truck and a car near Cooma this morning.
About 3am a Subaru Forrester was travelling south along the Monaro Highway, about 10km north of Cooma, when it has collided with a semi-trailer travelling in the opposite direction on the Numeralla Bridge.
As a result of the collision, the driver of the Subaru has died at the scene.
The male driver of the semi-trailer and his female passenger were uninjured and have been taken to Cooma Hospital for assessment.
I know two, possibly three males who own a Subaru Forrester, although I can’t imagine why they would have been driving to Cooma at 3am. I now need to contact each one of them…I usually try not to send them an email saying “there was a car crash near Cooma, please tell me that you weren’t involved” or similar…rather I contact them without making any reference to the crash.
Last time I went through this was a few months ago after a fatal car accident in Canberra. Thankfully the person I know wasn’t involved in that crash…but I hate going through this anyway. It’s just a really awful feeling reading that sort of press release and thinking “that matches the description of someone I know…I hope they’re OK”.
Samuel
August 5th, 2008 at 08:40am
I honestly don’t understand the thinking of the powers-that-be in the Labor Party on this one.
By-elections for the federal seats of Mayo and Lyne will be held on September 6.
The polls come as a result of the resignations from parliament of former foreign minister ALEXANDER DOWNER .. and former Nationals leader MARK VAILE.
House of Representatives speaker HARRY JENKINS says he’ll issue writs for the by-elections on Monday .. rolls will close on August 8 .. and nominations close on August 14.
The government will not run a candidate in Mayo .. and is not expected to run one in Lyne.
At last year’s federal election, Labor recorded a rather large swing towards them in Mayo as the AEC results show.
Alexander Downer won the ballot for the Liberal Party with 45,893 votes (51.08%) which was a pretty reasonable distance ahead of the ALP’s Mary Brewerton who received 27,957 votes (31.12%). Admittedly it is quite a gap, however Ms. Brewerton had a swing towards her of 14.63% whilst Mr. Downer had a swing against him of 2.56%. With the swing clearly showing that a large number of people lost confidence in Liberal Party, if you were the Labor Party, wouldn’t you at least try to play the “Alexander Downer ditched you, but we’re here for the long haul” card?
The seat of Lyne is a similar story according to the AEC.
Mark Vaile won for the National Party with 41,319 votes (52.26%), ahead of the Labor Party’s James Langley who managed to receive 25,358 votes (32.07%). The swing wasn’t as exciting as the one in Mayo; Mr. Vaile lost 4.44% and Mr. Langley gained 5.52%, but there is still plenty of votes to gain with the “we respect your decision to vote for us” campaign.
I’m not saying that it would be a definite win for Labor in either of these seats, but surely it’s worth a shot? Or was their 2007 election victory over the coalition and the independents by 83 seats to 65 to 2, giving them a majority of the House of Representatives, enough to make them believe that as long as they have a majority, those who didn’t vote for them last time are of no importance?
At the very least, wouldn’t you want to take advantage of good opinion polls while they’re here and give yourself a shot at having the advantage of incumbency at the next general election?
Oh well, if they want to waste a good opportunity, who am I to try and stop them?
Samuel
August 1st, 2008 at 08:49am
What sort of job do you think they might be advertising:
To be successful for this role, you will possess a likeable, unbiased nature with a “can do” approach to your work and a sincerity and warmth in dealing with and assisting people from all backgrounds and walks of life. You will be adept at minimising controversy and seek harmonious relationships [..]
It almost sounds like a diplomatic posting…but no, it’s an advertisement for an airport parking attendant. If only people working in airport carparks knew that they could be our next ambassador to Nigeria…I’m sure that the Nigerian scammers would be astounded to see all of the friendly replies to their peculiar emails.
That’s not the reason I copied that slab of text though, it was my amusement at the thought of me being “adept at minimising controversy” and having an “unbiased nature”. My referees would probably refuse to be my referees if they were asked for examples of times when I used my controversy minimising skills. Either that, or the potential employer would skip to the next applicant upon hearing the response “He has those? Can’t say that I’d noticed.”
Samuel
July 31st, 2008 at 04:38am
KFC have me concerned with their latest television advertisement (mirrored locally here for archival purposes as I’m sure KFC will remove it from their site in a matter of weeks).
The commercial talks about how all of their chicken is fresh, not frozen, when delivered and cooked on-site. However the fine print about five seconds in contains the disclaimer:
Excludes emergency stock.
It’s probably a very prudent practice to store some frozen chickens for the next time the chickens get visited by Rocky Rhodes and build a giant aeroplane in order to escape from captivity…but seriously, emergency chicken stocks? Maybe it’s perfectly safe, but it just doesn’t sound right…I wonder what the rotation rate is for these frozen chickens (eg. how long do they keep them frozen before discarding them)? And more importantly, I hope that they are discarding of near end-of-life emergency stock and not slipping it in with the daily fresh chicken batch.
I suppose that, ultimately, it’s just as the chefs say: if you knew what happened in the kitchen, you wouldn’t eat there.
Samuel
July 21st, 2008 at 08:06pm
An interesting story from news.com.au that I missed a couple days ago
VIRGIN Blue has been left red-faced after being forced to scrap an advertising campaign which urged people to “chuck a sickie” and jet off on holidays.
The controversial online “chuck-a-sickie sale” campaign urged frequent flyers to take time off work and take advantage of “top sale fares”.
But Virgin Blue chief Brett Godfrey moved to axe the campaign just 29 minutes after first seeing it, following a media inquiry over the slogan.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t see the difference between this advertising campaign and a similar one which was running inside Canberra’s buses for over a year, not all that long ago. The advertising campaign that I’m thinking of was run by a travel agent, from memory it was Sta Travel but I’m not entirely sure of that, and basically contained a transcript of a fictional phone call from an employee to an employer, explaining that they aren’t coming in to work, and won’t be for some time, due to an exotic illness. In the advertisement, it is quite clear that the phone call was being placed from a payphone in another country. The tagline on the ad was something about going on a holiday and working the rest out later.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the ad, but it was running for quite some time. I suppose the only plausible difference between the two campaigns is that Virgin Ble were running their campaign online and are a higher profile company. The campaign was therefore more noticeable, and for a company which relies fairly heavily on their brand being prominently and positively placed in the minds of people, I would imagine that Mr. Godfrey was concerned that negative publicity could work against the company.
I don’t think the campaign or potential negative publicity would have done Virgin Blue any harm, in fact I think most people would have seen the funny side of it and known that it wasn’t a directive or recommendation. As a campaign, it was quite clever and was probably designed to stir up a bit of controversy. Nothing makes an advertising campaign more effective than letting the media turn it in to “water cooler conversation”.
That said, the company is adamant that I’m wrong, and that they weren’t trying to cause controversy.
“It wasn’t some form of provocative advertising, it was simply a debatable advertising slogan that slipped through the cracks,” [Virgin Blue Spokeswoman] Ms [Heather] Jeffrey said.
It could be a move which will cost Mr. Godfrey though, because the news about Virgin Blue which has been getting media attention in the last few days is almost all about them increasing fares and lowering baggage weight limits. A bit of controversy to increase public awareness about something amusing they are doing, instead of something which hits the hip pocket, might be just what they need at the moment.
Oh well, it’s their (or should I say majority shareholder Richard Branson’s) loss.
Samuel
July 21st, 2008 at 01:59pm
Yesterday my copy of The City Chronicle arrived in my letterbox. I’ve been concerned about the seemingly dropping journalistic standards of this weekly paper since its parent company Rural Press merged with Fairfax a bit over a year ago. Unfortunately this week’s front page confirmed my fears.
Click image to enlarge
For those of you who aren’t aware, The Chronicle is a free weekly (except for a couple weeks over Christmas) newspaper produced by the people who produce The Canberra Times. It comes in a tabloid format and is delivered to approximately 128,000 households and workplaces across Canberra and Queanbeyan, and read by approximately 178,000 people. Editions of the paper are produced for each region across Canberra and Quenabeyan, with content differing slightly between these editions.
So, back to this week’s front page of The City Chronicle, and the lead story is about older buses in ACTION’s fleet struggling in wet weather.
Click image to enlarge
The story comes complete with a digitally altered image of an older bus sitting under an umbrella which seems to be floating in mid-air. The sky has also been altered to be a more menacing colour.
But what about the article itself…surely many many buses must have been off the road for this to warrant the front page of a weekly publication, especially when the story doesn’t relate to a particular region and could theoretically be used on every edition (I’m still checking up on that).
Out of action
Older buses struggle with recent rain
By Rebecca Thistleton
CANBERRA’S recent damp weather was too much to handle for some of Action’s older buses.
Last Monday, 13 buses were unable to operate because of wet weather.
A Territory and Municipal Services spokeswoman said this was 3.9 per cent of Action’s fleet of 339 buses, and was caused by “heavy rain and inclement weather.”
Gosh, so many buses off the road because of the rain…and such an unlucky number too. I wonder what could possibly have caused the buses to have so much trouble in this batch of rain when they didn’t have this much trouble with the last batch of rain?
“Action believes there is an increase due to issues such as the irregular use of windscreen wipers,” the spokeswoman said.
So, thirteen buses mysteriously had their windscreen wipers stop working on one day? Surely Ms. Thistleton thought there was something fishy about that figure and asked some questions about the number of buses which were “unable to operate” on previous rainy days…or was she just being taken for a ride by the good folks at ACTION Public Relations?
On a normal day, the average number of buses unable to operate properly was 2.7 per cent - that’s about nine buses out of action every day.
Nine buses out of action every day…wasn’t there a figure about the number of buses out of action last Monday earlier in this article?
Last Monday, 13 buses were unable to operate because of wet weather.
Um, doesn’t thirteen minus nine equal four? Does that mean that, in reality, The City Chronicle is running a front page story complete with digitally altered photograph, about four older buses having a windscreen wiper problem? Perhaps…let’s read on and find out.
One of the buses to break down on Monday was a newer, compressed natural gas model, the rest were older diesel models.
So, that’s actually only three more older buses off the road than usual. It’s hardly, as the sub-headline suggests, older buses struggling with recent rain. And it’s not as if there weren’t more important stories in the last week. Pages 14 and 15 contain a double page spread about Jon Stanhope’s ideas for a light rail network…surely a story like that deserves more prominence than a story which can only fill a column if the journalist quotes and paraphrases a TAMS spokeswoman droning on for three paragraphs about standard procedures for when a bus breaks down.
If The Chronicle keeps this up, I’m going to start to think they’ve hired all of the (freely distributed daily News Limited publication in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane) MX journalists. The writing and sensationalism is almost as good.
Now, just in case you’re interested in this awful beat-up of a front page lead story, here it is in all its glory…and if you’ll excuse me, I have an email to write to the good folks at Media Watch.
Samuel
July 17th, 2008 at 03:33pm
I’m almost certainly going to be howled down for this post…I can see the usual suspects dismissing me as a fanboy already, but hear me out because there is actually some substance to this.
This year, from the perspective of somebody like me who happens to like the two commercial AM radio stations in this town and takes note of what frequency various radios are tuned to, has been fairly disappointing. Apart from my own, I’ve struggled to find a radio which isn’t tuned to an FM commercial station. I’m not sure where all of the 666 ABC Canberra listeners are though, because I’ve barely spotted any of them.
The last month of so has seen a rather interesting turnaround though. Mix 106.3 lost Mark Parton, one of their rather popular breakfast hosts (the rumours have been flying about that ever since then). It’s fair to say that Mark had a unique style…he was never my cup of tea but a lot of people liked him, and his replacement, FM 104.7 presenter Cam Sullings, is a very different presenter. The two stations, despite a few similarities, really attract two rather different and mostly incompatible demographics…replacing Parton with Sullings has had a predictably mixed reaction from the audience, sending some in search of something else. Some of those listeners will be back simply because they like the rest of the station’s format, but others who desperately dislike Sullings won’t be back…and if they dislike Sullings then they’re not likely to enjoy FM 104.7, which doesn’t leave them with a lot of other possibilities. In music radio it leaves them with 2CA and a couple community stations who want to emulate a lot of Mix’s format.
In the short term Mix aren’t likely to gain as many listeners as they lose due to the breakfast change, mainly due to the fact that people who are listening to other breakfast shows don’t have any incentive to change. In the long term the changes at Mix may work well for them, but in the short term, with a survey period only a couple weeks away, the timing isn’t great.
In my opinion, if any station is likely to gain from Mix’s change of breakfast lineup, it’s 2CA as they have the closest music format to Mix 106.3 of any Canberra station, although where listeners end up will depend on their individual music tastes and not which station has the closest match.
Moving on to a few practical examples. In recent weeks I have spent more time in other peoples’ vehicles (be they private or public) than I have done in a very long time. With the exception of one bus driver who was listening to ABC NewsRadio, another who was listening to FM 104.7 and one who didn’t like the radio at all, all of the bus drivers (the number in this category would be close to twelve) have been listening to 2CA and 2CC. I’ve noted that the Steve Price Morning Show on 2CC is particularly popular among Canberra’s bus drivers, and it seems to be difficult to catch a bus between 9am and midday and not hear Price’s voice emanating from a speaker.
I also never thought I’d see the day (I was going to use the phrase “live to see the day”, but given recent posts on this blog, it may convey the wrong message) when people on The RiotACT would write about how much they enjoy listening to 2CC’s breakfast host Mike Jeffreys, and how 2CA’s playlist is enjoyable. (See the comments on http://the-riotact.com/?p=7932, http://the-riotact.com/?p=7831 and http://the-riotact.com/?p=7849). I was also surprised to see a YouTube video of a 2CC program end up on The RiotACT. For such a long time RiotACT has had a habit of attracting an awful lot of 666 ABC Canberra listeners…perhaps that’s the real reason for former (and now once again) RiotACT editor Johnboy returning to Canberra and the site, he wants to steer them all back to the ABC.
Another example of good signs for the commercial AM stations in Dickson Seafoods, (not surprisingly, a seafood shop in Dickson). For as long as I’ve been frequenting there (late 2004) they have been a Mix 106.3 shop. Their radio has been virtually araldited to Mix 106.3. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I walked in and heard a voiceover from Ron E. Sparks informing me that I was listening to 1053 2CA. I didn’t probe the staff on why they changed station, but it did occur to me that, considering the number of students from Daramalan College and Dickson College who frequent the store, this change of station is a mini-coup for 2CA.
A few paragraphs ago I mentioned that the next radio ratings survey period is about to start. It runs from August 3 to August 30, which means that each calendar week of the survey period contains the Beijing Olympic Games. There are only two stations in Canberra with the broadcast rights to the Games, 2CC and 666 ABC Canberra. The news services of both stations (which also serve 2CA and the ABC network respectively) have access to the Olympic broadcast material, but the FM commercial stations are lumped with the usual onerous broadcast restrictions for non-rights-holders. Whilst they are allowed to report scores and results, they have to deal with some pretty hefty restrictions on what else they can broadcast.
2CC and the ABC on the other hand have full access to commentary and pretty much whatever else they want from the games, which will make their news services much more appealing, not to mention the fact that the stations will be the place people will turn to for coverage of the games in many vehicles and offices around the city. This survey will be skewed in the favour of 2CC (and 2CA to a lesser extent due to their access to news and being the only music station near an Olympic broadcaster on the dial) and the ABC, and because of the way radio ratings work in Canberra, that skewing in favour of 2CC, 2CA and the ABC will be “official” until at least February next year, probably later. When you consider that the ABC don’t accept advertising, the only people to truly benefit from the skewing of this survey are 2CC and 2CA, and that of course will be at the expense of Mix 106.3 and FM 104.7 who make up the rest of Canberra’s commercial radio market.
If 2CC and 2CA can not only retain listeners after the Beijing Olympics but also use the extra advertising revenue effectively, then the games could be precisely the lift they need to be a very strong and effective competition against Mix 106.3 and FM 104.7
The next few months in Canberra’s radio landscape could be very interesting indeed.
Samuel
July 15th, 2008 at 12:23pm
Twitter is down for scheduled maintenance at the moment and I’m not waiting for nine hours just to make a quick remark.
The cheque’s in the mail! The ACT government are giving me a whole $11 for cancelling my car’s rego. Very desperate to get me off the road!
Apparently I can get a little bit more from the NRMA as they will refund the unused CTP component, but is it really worth my time to stand in line at an NRMA shopfront just to get another dozen dollars when I have already wasted half a morning at an ACT government shopfront?
It makes me wonder why the ACT government can collect money for the NRMA when you pay for vehicle registration, but they can’t refund it when you cancel registration. Seems like bureaucratic “make life harder for the people so they won’t try to get money from us” red tape to me.
If it were like New South Wales and we had a choice of CTP provider then it would make sense to claim a refund from the provider, but when the ACT government are enforcing a monopoly and are seemingly in cahoots with their provider of choice, surely it’s not too much to ask for both amounts to be refunded in one go.
Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that I was already in Dickson to see my doctor and I had to hand in the number plates at the government shopfront, I would think that spending half my morning being brainwashed by the annoying loop of ACT government advertisements on display at the shopfront, only to receive $11 after having paid the ACT government $6.60 for my transport for the day, would be a complete waste of time.
$11 in exchange for the remaining two months of rego…wouldn’t it be nice if vehicle registration only cost $5.50 per month. We might all be able to afford petrol then.
Samuel
July 4th, 2008 at 11:35am
I ended up spending some of the afternoon at the Legislative Assembly watching the debate surrounding the no confidence motion tabled against ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope last week. In the end, the only people to support the motion were the Liberal opposition.
The Chief Minister survived the motion 11 votes to 6.
Oh well, there’s always the election on the 18th of October.
Samuel
June 25th, 2008 at 06:26pm
The helpful message I received from the New South Wales Roads and Traffic Authority’s website at 4:15am when I attempted to register for an e-pass, in order to pay for my trips through the Sydney Harbour Tunnel on Sunday:
Apparently they don’t like people submitting orders between 12:30am and 6am. If they only accepted electronic orders during standard business hours it would almost be understandable. If they didn’t accept order between 12:30am and 6am on one day per week while they performed system maintenance it would be understandable…but to block orders every single day between those hours sounds like premium quality red tape to me, in other words, a rule for the sake of having a rule. I’m just surprised that the times aren’t more exotic, perhaps they could block orders between 12:27:48am and 6:04:27am in their next revision of their website…maybe they should block them between 11:36:53am and 2:43:18pm for an executive lunch break as well.
For a city that is trying to make all toll roads electronic and cash-free, this is a very poor effort.
Update: A few hours after originally writing this article I went back to the RTA website to register for an e-pass, during the registration process I gave them my email address so that they can email a copy of my invoice to me. Despite this, they want me to print the “registration successful” page containing my E-Toll Pass ID and Receipt Number for my reference. They have my email address, why can’t they just email the information to me? End Update
Samuel
June 24th, 2008 at 10:13am
If you think back three years to 2005and the height of the media excitement around the Schapelle Corby trial, almost everyone had an opinion on whether she was guilty of smuggling drugs or not, many of those opinions appeared to based on nothing more than a whim or whether she “looked like a drug smuggler”, A smaller number of opinions seemed to be based on selections of information presented at the trial and regurgitated by the media in a manner which would be impossible for an Australian based trial. Regardless of the opinions, the only person who really knew for sure was Schapelle Corby, for everyone else, it was a guess.
In the end, an Indonesian court found her guilty, and based on that, plus Schapelle’s body language of hitting herself on the head in a “why did I do something so stupid?” type of motion upon hearing the verdict, I formed the opinion that she probably was guilty. I don’t know for sure, but the evidence seems to fairly strongly indicate it in my mind.
Today, long after the story should have died, it still lingers and has returned to prominence with the revelation from one of Corby’s lawyers that he made up the whole “a baggage handler did it” defence:
SCHAPELLE Corby was in a Bali hospital under guard last night as a documentary revealed her ex-lawyer said Alexander Downer had suspected her family was behind her notorious crime.
[..]
The claim is made by Corby’s former defence lawyer, Robin Tampoe, in an explosive new documentary Schapelle Corby: The Hidden Truth.
The three-hour documentary screens tonight and Tuesday night on Channel 9.
In the documentary Mr Tampoe admits fabricating the defence that Australian baggage handlers could have planted the drugs in Corby’s luggage.
“Baggage handlers didn’t put drugs in the bag, nothing to do with it,” said Mr Tampoe, whom Corby sacked after she was sentenced to 20 years’ jail.
“Now she (Schapelle Corby) believes it. They all f—— believe it.
“It’s not true. That’s why you can’t put direct evidence relating to baggage handlers, ’cause they didn’t do it.
[..]
Mr Tampoe admitted in the documentary making up the theory after hearing ABC radio talkback in which callers discussed alleged corruption among airport staff. He no longer practises law.
He will face the Queensland Law Society next month over a misconduct complaint by Mercedes Corby.
Asked what he would say to the baggage handlers of Australia, Mr Tampoe says: “Sorry about that guys. Poor buggers. I won’t do it again. Thanks for the defence.”
If you think about it, the baggage handler theory was far fetched anyway. Illegal drugs are a rather valuable commodity and the people who take the risk of transporting it from one place to another in bulk amounts do so in a relatively controlled manner, they’re not going to “forget” to remove the drugs from a bag before shipping it overseas, and they’re not going to whack the illicit substance in some random bag that they may never see again. They’re going to know exactly where the bag is going, what it looks like, when it will get there, and how they’re going to get the substance out before anybody notices.
The inherent risks of transporting this stuff are too great to not take extreme care, admittedly mistakes will occur from time to time, but if the drugs in Corby’s bag had been planted by a baggage handler, there would have been at least a trace of suspicious activity by a baggage handler…but there wasn’t, so that defence fell flat on its face despite the media having a field day with it.
It’s unfortunate that this story is still dragging out and that everyone who has even a remote relationship with the Corby family seem to be doing their best to cash in on the saga. I have to wonder why we seem to be so content to make such a glorified spectacle of a convicted drug smuggler, and why the media think that her mental state, three years after her conviction, is of any interest to the general public. There are many people in Australian prisons who have mental health problems but we don’t make their plight a front-page news story…I don’t see any good reason for Schapelle Corby to receive media attention unless some amazing evidence comes to light showing that she is innocent, or (and I certainly don’t wish this on her) she dies, in which case she would deserve fleeting media attention as a person who was once in the public eye and is now no longer with us.
I don’t have the faintest clue why this story keeps getting a run in the media, perhaps somebody can enlighten me. Have I completely missed the point here? Does Schapelle deserve the attention? If so, why? And could it really be true that this story is so much more important than everything else going on in the world that it needs to be dragged up over and over and over every few months?
I just don’t get it. Unless I’ve completely missed something here and I’m looking at this from the perspective of another planet, I just can’t see any reason for the continued interest in the story. She was convicted, she is in prison, and her appeals failed; surely that should be a sign for the rest of us to move on.
Samuel
June 22nd, 2008 at 02:14pm
After seeing a neurologist this afternoon to discuss ongoing persistent migraines, I visited the pharmacy in Cooleman Court to hand in an almost unreadable prescription. I left with prescription receipt number 077954 and returned about ten minutes later, at which time the pharmacist was summoned to talk to me about the medication.
I don’t know about you, but when a pharmacist looks at a box of medication and announces that he has never seen it before and has no idea what it does, and then decides to read bits of the medicine’s documentation to me, I am not filled with confidence.
He managed to retract more confidence a short time later when he thought that Lexapro (the other medication that I am taking at the moment) was two different medications, and didn’t know what either of them did.
This is a contrast to my usual pharmacy where advice from the pharmacist comes in the form of stickers on the box. Human interactions are generally limited to “Here’s your prescription, pay at the counter”. If this is the standard of care in our pharmacies, perhaps there isn’t anything to lose by letting supermarkets have in-store pharmacies…as long as they don’t start charging us by the litre.
Samuel
May 30th, 2008 at 05:03pm
I just worked out how Aldi manage to keep their prices down. They get people off the street to write instructions on their products and then don’t pay them for it.
How else could they explain the instructions on a lasagne box saying to put the lasagne in a 1200 watt microwave for fifteen minutes. After 4 minutes and six seconds in an 1100 watt microwave it was overflowing; I can only imagine the melted plastic goop I would have been having to clean up if I had left it unattended for 15 minutes.
I’m not sure that the idea of putting the lasagne (in its plastic container) in a conventional oven for half an hour would have been much better.
Now, let’s hope that they actually paid the people that put the lasagne in the plastic container. If not, I will probably expire.
Samuel
May 23rd, 2008 at 09:17pm
Professor Tim Flannery has some bright ideas to prevent global warming:
SCIENTIST Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.
[..]
Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.
[..]
The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.
Well that’s all well and good except that, firstly, sulphur is generally not a gas, and secondly, when it is, it works wonders if you want acid rain. In a gaseous form you can have either sulphur dioxide or sulphur trioxide; the former is a primary cause of acid rain as sulphuric acid, the latter is mixed with water to produce sulphuric acid.
Unfortunately News Limited omitted the line of the AAP story explaining why Professor Flannery wants sulphur in the atmosphere, but The Age were kind enough to include it:
The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.
That’s odd, I thought it was only the “greenhouse gases are not the cause of global warming, it’s all the sun’s fault” crowd that wanted to blame the sun’s rays for changes in Earth’s climate. Thankfully the professor proves that he is not in my camp on that one:
Regardless of what happened to emissions in the future, there was already far too much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, he said.
Cutting emissions was not enough. Mankind now had to take greenhouse gases out of the air.
OK, but how? I suppose more trees could help (unless you’re the confused scientist who kept telling 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys about the merits of de-forestation this morning…he didn’t realise he had the wrong term at any stage during the conversation) but if we need to actively remove it from the atmosphere, doesn’t that mean burning an awful lot of fuel to get extraction devices up there?
Personally, I’d much rather watch the temperature fall all by itself.
At the very least, kudos to the nutty professor for trying, and for giving me some extra entertainment.
Samuel
May 20th, 2008 at 08:35pm
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