Good evening Stuart,
It sounds like I disagree with you about the death penalty. I support the death penalty in cases where the offender has been convicted of extremely serious offences (such as multiple murders, serial rapists, repeat paedophiles etc) and a period of at least five years has passed since the conviction. It is my view that such people are not able to be rehabilitated, and there is no point in keeping them alive, or spending taxpayer funds on keeping them alive when such funds could be better utilised maintaining the law abiding community's services.
I also have no problem with Australians being given the death sentence in foreign countries if they have been found guilty of a serious offence by a fair judicial system. I do not see it as our place to tell foreign countries how to run their legal systems, especially when we would be less than receptive of their advice on running our legal system.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
October 9th, 2007 at 11:00pm
I had given up on predicting when the prime minister will call the election, but in the last few days I have come to the conclusion that I believe I know when the election will be called, so I will predict it.
The Governor-General will be back in Canberra on Friday, and I believe that if John Howard were to leave the announcement until Friday or later, he would suffer another round of “why haven’t you called the election yet?” taunts, and so I believe he will try to catch everyone by surprise on Thursday by announcing the date, and then he will ask the Governor-General to dissolve the relevant section of parliament on Friday.
This would make the election date either November 17th, November 24, December 1, December 8 or December 15, and I believe John Howard will choose November 24.
As it stands, if John Howard does announce the election on Thursday, 2CC’s Mike Welsh owes me a Kit Kat, and if John Howard announces the election on Friday I owe Mike a Kit Kat. I’m not entirely sure if we will owe each other a Kit Kat if Mr. Howard doesn’t call the election on either day.
Samuel
October 9th, 2007 at 10:02am
It’s 4:20am, I’m busy finishing up some loose ends of a bunch of website migrations at work, and have the radio with Clive Robertson on in the background. I’m having an enjoyable morning in my own company, and then I spot a black shape on the ceiling a few metres away from me…I’m not alone, it’s a spider of unknown origin, about 15 centimetres across.
There is something mildly disturbing about finding out that you are not alone in a room that you believe you have been alone in for the last few hours, and the thing sharing the room with you has six more legs than you do.
At this point in time I started talking to the spider, it was already moving towards the other side of the room, so the chat was fairly civil and mainly consisted of me mentioning that I had no intention of harming it, as long as it had no intention of harming me. I then, in lieu of the spider’s real name, nicknamed it “Boris”, found a copy of “Boris The Spider” by The Who, muted Clive and played the song for the spider…an interesting song, but on reflection, the lyrics probably make it one of the less friendly songs to play to a spider, especially one that was being as nice as Boris was.
Anyway, I got back to work and kept an eye on the spider…and then lost track of the spider for about twenty minutes, before I spotted it standing near a light near the exit. I had been planning on going across the road to get some milk to go with some breakfast cereal for a while, but first I wanted to work out what sort of spider Boris was, so I walked over slowly and as I approached, Boris suddenly coiled back in to (possibly) a defensive position…I backed away and left it alone.
5am came and I was ready for breakfast, so after a bit more conversation with the spider, I slowly crept around the area it was occupying on the ceiling, walked out the door and crossed the road. As I walked across the road it occurred to me that since I had stopped referring to the spider as “Boris”, it was being much more friendly, wasn’t jumping when I came near, and was staying on its side of the room. Perhaps, as it was being friendly when not being called Boris, it was actually a female spider and did not want to be referred to by a male name. I decided against calling it Borisette as I didn’t think it would particularly appreciate that.
As I walked back to the office I could see that the spider hadn’t left its position near the light, and as the morning went on and I enjoyed my breakfast and continued working, it barely moved from the location. It was almost a stand-off situation, and I eventually came to the conclusion that the better song (than Boris The Spider) for the situation was Aha’s “Take On Me”, especially the lines:
You shying away
I’ll be coming for you anyway
[..]
Take me on
I’ll be gone
in a day or two
Around 6:30 I lost track of the spider again, and then I worked out where it was a little while later when I spotted the edges of two legs on the far end of the light it had been occupying earlier in the morning. After this it moved in to the sunlight, and then I lost track of it again around 7:15 and haven’t seen it since.
I am reminded, ever so slightly, of the morning where I came to the conclusion that, if gravity were reversed, ceilings would make terrible floors. I suppose it really depends on the size of the thing using the ceiling as a floor. For a spider it doesn’t really matter as it is used to climbing over these strange objects we place on the ceiling, but for us the objects would be trip hazards.
I think (2UE overnight producer) Abe is right…I think about these things too much.
Samuel
October 9th, 2007 at 08:07am