Dr. Tim Flannery. I’m yet to see it on AAP or Radioinfo (who are distributing audio), but 2UE’s 7PM news has announced Dr. Flannery as the Australian Of The Year.
Congratulations Tim.
Update 7:08pm: OK, AAP and Radioinfo have caught up. End Update
Samuel
9 comments January 25th, 2007 at 07:02pm
Good morning again Mike,
A few quick thoughts on Pru Goward's idea of piping water from Googong dam to Goulburn.
1. They have just as much right to the water as we do.
2. They're only going to use a tiny amount compared to us, especially seeing as they will only use Googong a few times per year
3. It's an election promise…el nino will most probably be breaking by the time the NSW election is over, but the pipeline would be a good investment for the future if it ever happens.
4. The more we whinge about this, the less likely we are to get help from NSW when the next drought strikes.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
4 comments January 25th, 2007 at 08:00am
2UE just can’t make their mind up about their schedule…Glenn Wheeler has supposedly taken leave after working seven days a week almost every week since Stan Zemanek resigned. Stuart Bocking is filling in for him for the rest of this week…Clive Robertson is filling Stuart’s middawn shift.
Friday is a public holiday, and being a public holiday right next to the weekend, 2UE have decided to run their weekend schedule on Friday put George Moore and Paul B. Kidd on breakfast. John Kerr is in Tamworth judging the Country Music Awards, and I highly doubt he will be back for Friday morning, and 2UE being the place it is, I wouldn’t be surprised if Clive Robertson hosts New Day. George and Paul will be hosting the “breakfast” shift, which being a weekend runs from 6am-midday…the upshot of which is that network stations will get them filling in for John Laws.
Update 12:09pm 24/Jan/2007: OK…nice joke from a usually reliable source…very funny. As albona said in the comments below, and as the source has since emailed to tell me, George and Paul are only doing the regular 5:30-9:00 breakfast. Tim Webster will be on the Laws programme…my source doesn’t know who will fill in for John Stanley or Steve Price, I’m tipping Steve Liebmann and Murray Olds respectively. I suppose I was a bit too eager to accept the notion of George and Paul being broadcast nationally again as we don’t get to hear them in Canberra any more.End Update
Apparently Glenn Wheeler won’t be back until Saturday, although that seems a bit odd to me…that shift is a mystery. Mike Williams should be heard on Friday night.
Looking further ahead, and John Laws is back on deck on Monday, with an increased number of network stations. Lawsie will now be heard on a record 73 stations covering 1,500 towns and cities, with an estimated daily audience of two million people. It must cost a fortune for Toyota to advertise on that show!
In further 2UE movements, it is now strongly rumoured that Stan Zemanek’s replacement will either be announced or start on Monday. Interestingly the majority of names flying around as the supposed replacement for Stan are the “beauties” from his television talk show “Beauty and The Beast”. I’ve got to admit that I still fancy Stuart Bocking, especially as he has been put in that shift yet again, and this time without Rachel Friend as a sidekick (that experiment drew more than a few complaints…I can’t understand why, I thought they made a great duo). That being said, my sources are all saying that Stuart Bocking, Clive Robertson and Glenn Wheeler are not in the running for the job.
Samuel
17 comments January 23rd, 2007 at 11:58pm
From the desk of Ismail:
Are you obsessed with banning things from your forum?
Just because the public aren’t giving the answers you like, it doesn’t mean you can ban the question!
He then went on with some derogatory nonsense about John B1_B5 (want the email and the IP address John?) which I won’t publish here.
For the 15 millionth time…it is my site and I can do what I like with it (within legal parameters).
This IS NOT a forum, a forum involves a group of people writing public messages and replying to them in some sort of threaded way, generally with various categories for discussions. A forum is a very free-form generally self-moderating thing.
This is a website where I write posts and choose the subjects, and people can discuss those…it has some forum-like attributes, but is not a forum.
As for the poll question…I didn’t delete the answer because people were providing an answer I didn’t like…it was because certain individuals saw fit to get around the one answer per person regulations and add about 50 votes to the silliest answer on the list…one which I was silly to add in the first place. If they had added the votes elsewhere I would have done a bit more work to find the duplicate votes, but in this case the repeated abuse of the poll wasn’t worth my time.
I have no interest in choosing which answer wins, which would defeat the purpose of the poll, I just have an interest in gauging the opinion of people reading this website, and to do that I do have to make decisions to protect the poll from abuse.
For the record I am going to mention the few legitimate votes for “13 and under” when I write the results post on Saturday night.
While I’m here, and while the subject of this post is “madness”, I might as well address the concerns of the people at Brown Noise Unit (apparently I’m supposed to link to them if I mention them…or some such nonsense). The most laughable suggestion is that I stole their idea of having a poll in the sidebar…obviously Brown Noise Unit invented that concept…maybe they even invented the English language…I better learn Italian then because I’m obviously breaking a law by using their language.
The stolen poll idea was a laughable suggestion from The Beige Baron, but the other claims of stolen ideas or ideas they gave to me are even more laughable…here’s Chuck A. Spear:
Yes Baron. It doesn’t surprise me though. We gave him a few other good ideas.
1. The name and concept for Editorial Echoes.
2. A podcast
3. 2nd series of Dlognwot
4. The iPhone post
4. Encouragement for more of what has been lacking at that blog: Stepometre, label changes, cafe reviews, Nattie, folding the washing etc…
I think BNU should pinch one of his. The random quote generator.
Samuel is “recovering from the effects of medication”. I wish him well.
I’ll address that point-by-point.
1. Name and concept of Editorial Echoes. Name, yes, I asked for suggestions when I came up with the concept, and acknowledged Chuck for the “winning entry” in episode one.
2. A podcast…well there’s only one other podcast here, and I came up with the idea for that a looooong time ago.
3. 2nd series of Samuel In Dolgnwot…nope, my idea, 17th August 2005.
4. The iPhone post…it was news, and I think Ars Technica and Cnet beat us all to it…Actually I think Apple beat us by having all the details online as Steve Jobs was announcing them.
5 (oddly numbered 4). I get lots of suggestions…doesn’t mean you own the site…but I appreciate the ideas none-the-less.
Feel free to nab the idea of the random quote generator, which isn’t my idea anyway. If you were running WordPress over at BNU I would point you in the direction of the Witty Text plugin (site currently down) which powers the random quotes here…but I’m sure you can find something for your site.
And thank you for your well wishes.
There is a whole lot more nonsense (including something about nobody caring about my opinion)…all available in the comments to the Brown Noise Unit poll about whether I’m the right age to run polls or not.
If they want to whinge about me, then so be it, but it’s about time they realised that this is my site, and their whinging is not going to change the way I choose to run it.
Samuel
6 comments January 23rd, 2007 at 10:24pm
The title of this post is definitely a bit of selective quoting on my behalf…this is in fact an update on the Italian blogger denouncement saga (see here, here and here). I have in fact received a reply to my email defending my actions.
giusto..bravo hai ragione..infatti ora è chiuso al pubblico
adios
In an attempt to get a vague understanding of the email, I put it through the Google language mashing machine (aka Google Translator) and got this:
just. .bravo you have reason. .infatti hour is closed the public adios
As far as I could tell it had something to do with the reason for closing hours…so I forwarded the email to Frankster, who provided a legible translation.
Correct..good you are right..in fact, it’s now closed to the public.
goodbye
They seem to have accepted my argument about fair use provisions of copyright laws, and I think this means that they didn’t actually properly understand my original post in the first place when the angrily emailed me…but the “it’s now closed to the public” bit is vague…do they mean their blog (which is indeed closed to the public now), or something else? Knowing that it was open to interpretation, Frankster explained the intricacies of the translation.
So we can pretty much from this judge that the matter’s now over. He’s
acknowledged you were right all along and has realised this – so no further
action. I think when he says “chiuso al pubblico” which means “closed to the
public” it’s a term meaning the matter is closed, let’s move on – it doesn’t
mean ‘publically closed and i will continue the matter outside of public
viewing”, it’s more in a manner of speaking sort of thing.
And there we have it, the end of a rather odd chapter in the history of Samuel’s Blog.
Samuel
January 22nd, 2007 at 08:34pm
For those of you who are wondering, things have been a bit slow around here lately, with the majority of content being emails I’ve sent in to talkback radio. Regular features have been missing or late, and the “best of” episode of Samuel’s Persiflage is still not here…you could be forgiven for thinking that I’m losing interest, but thankfully that’s not the case.
For the majority of this year to date I have been either unwell, or recovering from the effects of medication…ultimately this has not been a great year so far, I am very annoyed with how I have managed to let just about everything lapse, and even more annoyed with the illness which has caused it.
It seems that each time I’ve started to feel well again, there has been some sort of complication…either I’ve caught something else, or I haven’t quite gotten over what I had. My doctor has been somewhat perplexed by the whole thing, but it looks like we’re making progress and I should be back to 100% shortly.
The upshot of this is that Samuel’s Persiflage #12, the best of 2005/2006 episode, should be out later this week. Due to it being as late as it is, it has become the de facto January episode. I am currently considering having two episodes in February.
One of the few good things about having the time to myself to think whilst unwell is that I have had plenty of time to evaluate ideas, and I have come up with a couple for this blog which I think will be good.
Samuel
2 comments January 22nd, 2007 at 12:29pm
With many thanks to Frankster for the translation services, I can finally bring you a proper translation of the email which the Italian blogger sent me in response to this post about blog design.
Who the hell gave you permission to publish on your site my post? Who gave
you authorisation? Please, if you have to respond, use the italian language.
(http:// address being referred to here). Immediately you are to delete your
post before I denounce you, and next time, ask permission to republish my
postings if you have something to laugh about at my expense. Did you believe
that I would not discover it???
A denouncement? That sounds like fun…bring it on!
Whilst I’m sure my previous attempt at communicating with this blogger resulted in nothing but confusion, I have decided to try again.
Hello,
I am sorry about the delay in sending you a legible reply, but I do not speak Italian and as such require the assistance of a translation service to communicate with you.
I used a screenshot of the blog in question as an example of a widespread trend in poor blog design. Under fair use provisions of copyright laws, portions of copyright material may be used for critical analysis.
I am sorry if I upset you or anyone else, but I was merely pointing out an obvious deficiency in the design of the blog. I have no comment on the content of the blog as I do not understand it. I was not trying to “laugh at your expense”, but instead examine a trend in blog design which I find disturbing, apart from which, the image I used was a low quality reproduction, and as I have already stated, such use for critical analysis is permitted under Australian copyright law.
Your blog was one I stumbled on by accident and it reminded me that I was going to write something about blog designs, and as such I used it as an example. I was not making any comment on the content of your blog.
As for your comment about me believing that you would not discover my post, you are wrong. If I had not wanted you to find out, I would never have posted a link to your blog. As it happens, I believe that it is only fair for people to be able to find out if something is written about them or one of their publications.
Once again, there is nothing personal here, and I stand by my actions as I do not think I have done anything wrong.
Kind Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Frankster translated that for me, and as such, the following email has been sent to the blogger in question.
Ciao,
Mi dispiace che devuto aspettare un momento per la leggibile messaggio, ma
non parlo italiano, e devo usare un servizio traduzione letterale per
comunicare con te.Io usato un screenshot da la tua sito come un esempio da la popolare stile
di sventurato sito progetto. Soto la “fair use” provizorio da le legge di
copyright, parte da la copyright materiale po essere usato per anilisi
critico.Sono spiacente se io sconvolto te o qualcuno altro, ma io soltanto stava
precisando una mancanza evidente nel disegno del tuo sito. Non ho comento su
la contenuto perche non lo capisco. Especialmente non ero “ridendo a la tua
spesa”, ma preferibilmente esamino una tendenzia nel disegno del tu sito che
disturba me, altre l’immagine che ho usato era un qualita cattiva, e come
gia ho fatto caso, e secondo legge Australiana di copyright.Tuo sito era uno che trovato per incidente, e sono ricordato che stavo
andare per scrivere qualcosa di blog disegne, e po troppo ho usato per
esempio. Assoltamente non stavo facendo osservazione sul contenuto del
vostro blog.Per quanto riguarda il vostro commento che credo che non abbiate scoperto,
tu hai fato un grande errore. Se non avessi desiderati scoprire, non
avrebbero invitato mai un collegamento al vostro blog. Ma come e andata, io
credo che sia soltanto giusto che la gente possa da scoprire se qualcosa è
scritta di loro o una pubblicazioni di loro.Allora, non ce niente personale qui, e io te lo dicco asoltamente che io
credo che ho la ragione, e penso che non ho fato qualche cosa sbagliato.Riguardi gentili,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
With any luck this will be the last we hear of this incident.
Samuel
3 comments January 22nd, 2007 at 07:54am
This week the award goes to Bobbie Gentry. I had a hard time choosing which of her songs to feature, but eventually settled on “Ode to Billy Joe”. Whilst she is a superb singer, her duets with Glen Campbell are absolutely brilliant.
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door “y’all remember to wipe your feet”
And then she said “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge”
“Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”And Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
“Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please”
“There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow”
And Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie BridgeAnd Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night?
“I’ll have another piece of apple pie, you know it don’t seem right”
“I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge”
“And now you tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”And Mama said to me “Child, what’s happened to your appetite?”
“I’ve been cookin’ all morning and you haven’t touched a single bite”
“That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today”
“Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way”
“He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge”
“And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge”A year has come ‘n’ gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe
And Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going ’round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn’t seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw RidgeAnd drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Samuel
3 comments January 21st, 2007 at 11:54pm
Whilst Ishamael and I have settled our differences, the person who pretended to be Ishamel, namely Ismail, continues to pester me and write strange emails about how I should be running this blog, usually it involves him telling me why I should ban someone.
As he is using a fake email address (Ismail@stickmyheadupaturkey.com), the only way I can reply is to post my reply on this blog, something I don’t really intend on doing very often. That being said, Ismail has solved the mystery of the votes for people aged 13 and under driving cars with his latest email.
Subject…: I think you should ban HoinK
………………………………………………….After all, no-one else got a second chance, so why should he? And for the record, all six votes for 13-year-old drivers are mine – I think the highways would be far more interesting with younger drivers doing the wild thing … it would be like playing dodgem cars.
I also think Santa Claus should move aside for a teen, or be banned all together.
Now you’ll have to excuse me, I have to be at Glebe Park to jump about like a frog in a huddle with other loonies nefore we all put other calls in to John Stanley.
And John B1-B5 should be banned for his off topic post about you and rabbits.
END UPDATE
Well I suspected it was a Brown Noise Unit contributor who was responsible for the votes, and I’m glad they aren’t serious. Of course, if Ismail is being serious, then I can only suspect that he doesn’t have much respect for life, as his plan would ultimately result in a lot of deaths.
As for banning HoinK…nope, no reason to at this stage. John B1_B5’s post about me and rabbits was actually a very good on topic observation…and yes Ismail, you better join your friends at Glebe Park as they jump around like frogs.
With Ismail and various other things tonight, this has been a very funny and entertaining night.
Samuel
8 comments January 21st, 2007 at 11:23pm
Now that I’ve had a bit of “public beta” time to adjust a couple settings on the polling system and fix a few minor issues, it’s time to kick off the series of weekly polls.
Total Votes: 35
Started: January 20, 2007
I’ll try not to create polls with this many options in the future, but for some polls it is necessary. I have included the common ages and some that surround them, and left the less common ages with blanket options, just vote for the one that fits your opinion.
Feel free to discuss the poll subject in the comments below. You need to be a registered member of Samuel’s Blog to comment, but anyone can vote. The system will attempt to prevent you from voting more than once, and whilst it might not always be able to do that, I request that you only vote once.
The results from the test poll are as follows:
Total Votes: 14
Started: January 19, 2007
For a list of all previous results, see the Weekly Poll Results page.
Samuel
7 comments January 21st, 2007 at 12:03am
Good morning John,
You had a lady call up yesterday complaining about your theme music. Well I have to say that I like both your theme music (which is also used for Clive, Clinton and whoever else fills in), and the music Stuart uses…but I absolutely hate the new voice over. I know that the previous voice over man has left 2UE, but he sounded so much more natural. I'm sure the new voice over lady is very talented, and it sounds like 2UE really rushed to get all the old voice overs replaced (they missed Antiques and Collectables thankfully), but they really need to either write scripts which suit the new lady, or find someone else.
After a week of hearing the new voice overs, I would be used to them if I could stand them, but I can't, and instead I am using the volume control to get rid of them.
But back to what the lady was talking about yesterday…I love your theme music!
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
5 comments January 21st, 2007 at 12:00am
Radioinfo are running a story about Bill Caralis’ “Supernetwork” appointing ten new journalists. The article quotes the general manager of 2LM/ZZZfm Lismore, Chris Lodge, confirming the story.
Well I don’t know when they are counting from, but if it includes late last year, then I would just like to congratulate Leonie Ryan, ex-2UE producer, who is one of the new recruits in the 2LM/ZZZfm newsroom. Actually, I’ll congratulate you regardless of whether or not you are part of the ten new journalists.
Samuel
January 20th, 2007 at 09:32pm
Good afternoon again Glenn,
I absolutely agree with you about maturity and the ages at which things are allowed.
I'm 19 now, and will be 20 in June, and as I look back on the last four years or so, I just find it amazing how immature I, and everyone around me, was, and how mature we all thought we were.
I did some absolutely stupid things when I was 16, and I can honestly say that I did some stupid things at 17, and even at 18…and I probably still do to a lesser extent and will look back in a year and identify some silly things.
I think the main problem isn't so much the ages at which we allow certain things, it is more the level of maturity, and everyone matures at a different rate…it's not as if everyone is suddenly mature at 18 or 21 or any other nominal age…I certainly didn't feel any different when I was 18 years old to when I was 17 year and 364 days old. In fact I don't think it really sunk in that I was an adult for another few months.
Ultimately I don't think people can mature until they finish secondary education as high school is such an insular environment…it's not until you are out in the workforce and/or tertiary education and you have to fend for yourself in just about every thing (even if you still do live with your parents) that you truly mature.
Unfortunately we can't easily measure maturity, which is why we set nominal ages…and as most of our laws are based on the premise of the lowest common denominator, 18 is probably a fair age for voting, smoking, driving, sex etc in my view. I think the latter two are currently permitted at an age when the majority of people aren't truly ready…some are, but very few.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
4 comments January 20th, 2007 at 01:30pm
Good afternoon Glenn,
I think the reason GPS navigation systems have the video display with the map on it, and not just the "turn left in 257 metres" audio messages, is that it is reassuring to see the map occasionally, and see that the GPS system does at least appear to know where it's going.
It is also helpful if you are sitting at a red light in a "foreign" city and you can quickly check where the GPS will tell you to go so that you can be sure to get into the correct lanes and also have an idea where you are going, which is much less stressful than hoping that the magic voice gives you the right directions.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
January 20th, 2007 at 12:30pm
Good morning John,
Wow! what a morning of nuts…I think I know where they came from too! Yesterday evening when I went for a walk with my little doggie we went past Glebe Park in Central Canberra, and spotted a group of about 10-15 people huddled in a circle, and then they started jumping around in a way which looked like they thought they were frogs.
Whilst I hope I was just seeing them out of context, I do have this strange feeling that they might be the escaped lunatics who have been entertaining you this morning.
Have a great day John.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
January 20th, 2007 at 03:30am
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | |
| 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
| 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |||