Archive for March, 2008
It seems that Stephen has managed to convince himself that Weston Creek is the centre of Canberra, and spent a bit too much time coming up with a theory to prove it.
The theory seems to revolve around the ACT government selling a mis-spelled and possibly discounted and uninhabited version of Gungahlin to the New South Wales government. Based on the fact that Queanbeyan is on the diagram of “important parts of Canberra”, I assume that the theory involves the ACT government purchasing Queanbeyan and turning it in to a suburb of Canberra, possibly as a straight-swap for Gungahlin.
The article is well worth a read, for entertainment value if nothing else.
It reminds me of the endless stream of studies, surveys and theories that get released by various universities, seemingly for the sole purpose of making us all ask “who paid for that, and what substance did they inhale beforehand?”.
Samuel
March 18th, 2008 at 09:10am
I’m doing things a little bit differently this year, in that I’m not only trying to correctly tip more than 50% of the matches, I’m also trying to tip a positive points difference. Read on and I’m sure it will make sense.
NRL Round 1
Broncos V Panthers -36
Eels V Bulldogs -8
Knights V Raiders +16
Rabbitohs V Roosters -14
Sea Eagles V Sharks +6
Storm V Warriors +14
Titans V Cowboys +18
Tigers V Dragons -8
Total: 4/8 (50%)
Points: -12
The tips for the rest of the year in both AFL and NRL will be online in the early hours of tomorrow morning.
Samuel
March 18th, 2008 at 08:06am
Yesterday afternoon Glenn Wheeler asked his listeners to pre-empt the inevitable rise is the price of petrol over the Easter long weekend by guessing the next ridiculous excuse that the petrol companies will come up with. I called Glenn to submit my entry:
We have to cover the cost of our insurance premiums, which have gone up due to all the people who faint when they see the price of petrol.
Glenn had a few good entries and it will be interesting to see if the Petrol companies ever use the excuses he received. Would anybody here like to come up with a reason?
Samuel
March 18th, 2008 at 05:53am
Good morning Jim,
I was listening with interest to the story you read about the superannuation firm signing up their customers to an insurance policy simply by sending them a letter.
It may be perfectly legal, but it sounds to me like a legal form of fraud. Whoever thought up the law which allows superannuation funds to assume that they have the permission to do virtually whatever they like with the compulsory contributions must have had a screw loose, as it makes it just a bit too easy for the people in charge of the super fund to siphon off a few percent of the takings to their cousin's company, or anywhere else they like.
I have to admit that if my super fund had done this, I probably wouldn't have noticed because my statement arrived about a fortnight ago and I didn't open it until I noticed it beside me while an ad break was running on the television a couple days ago.
It's sad to think that we've reached a point where you almost need a lawyer to read through the gibberish in the fine print before you sign anything, for fear of giving your life's earnings to the director of a super fund, or a bank, or any other institution that makes you sign something.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Article: Opt-out Insurance Becomes a Super Trap: Sydney Morning Herald, March 15
March 18th, 2008 at 04:00am
Ten days ago Davky asked “On another topic, Sambo, have you considered running an online talkback show (is this possible using skype or something?)”.
It’s an interesting question because in July last year I planned on doing this with Samuel’s Persiflage, only to find that Skype had issues with their Skypecast service on the evening that the live show was scheduled.
At the time I floated Talkshoe as a potential viable alternative, but I was a bit dismayed that the only way to participate at the time was on the phone, via a United States phone number. The software has matured since then, and the function which was under testing at the time (taking part for free with a microphone through the Talkshoe software) is now a standard function of the software. Talkshoe is a better application for a talkback style program because you can listen in a web browser without downloading additional software, and you can take part via a text chat facility. If you want to ring in, that is possible via phone (including VOIP applications such as Skype) or through the Talkshoe downloadable application.
Talkshoe can also automatically record the show which is rather useful, as has a better management system than Skype’s skypecast system
I don’t really have time to run a show at the moment, but I’m pleased to see some improvement in the software which would make it possible, and it’s something I will be considering when I have a bit more time on my hands.
Samuel
March 17th, 2008 at 01:17pm
If there is one thing I like more than people saying amusingly peculiar things, it’s people saying amusingly peculiar things in support of things I disagree with.
Take Wilfried Haeberli from the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich in Switzerland for example. Whilst talking about various glaciers “disappearing” due to global warming, he said “There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine. The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise”.
As 2CC’s Mike Jeffreys pointed out this morning, Mr. Haeberli seems to be getting his metaphors mixed up. Canaries which emerge from a coal mine are a good thing, and melting ice doesn’t usually make much noise.
What I find particularly odd about the article is “The estimates, based on measuring the thickness of glacier ice, indicated an average loss of about 1.5 metres in 2006”, but it’s now March 2008, why don’t we have measurements from last year…does it really take fifteen months to calculate the average of the measurements taken during 2006, or are they just saving on carbon emissions by making their PR person swim across the oceans to each media outlet?
The other sentence of note in the article just makes the point that I’ve been trying to make for ages. “The thaw could disrupt everything from farming – millions of people in Asia depend on seasonal melt water from the Himalayas”. It’s quite simple…adapt. The world changes, we as the human race, just like every other animal and plant on this planet, have to adapt if we plan to continue to exist.
Moving on, and Jim Ball was talking about a book which sounds very interesting this morning. “Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years” by S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery is described by Jim as a book which “totally and forensically demolishes the entire global warming fraud and of course the fraudsters”.
It has recently been re-released as a paperback and I intend on buying a copy as it sounds like a good read. Jim links to a review by Jay Lehr, Ph.D. which I’ll quote in part. As much as I would like to quote it in full, there just isn’t enough room here for that.
With their new book, Unstoppable Global Warming Every 1500 Years, S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery skewer all the misinformation that has been used for so long in an attempt to convince society that mankind is the root cause of all global climate change.
The book is truly amazing! It meticulously supports, with hundreds of detailed, published references, the clear facts and conclusions that the Earth’s climate has been traveling a well-defined rollercoaster path of temperature change for at least 900,000 years.
[..]
In almost a point-by-point refutation of Al Gore’s unsupportable rant that “the debate is over; man is warming the Earth,” Singer and Avery explain technically but lucidly why nearly every cherry-picked fact in Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” is contradicted by science, which weighs heavily in favor of a very different truth: Man is in fact all but irrelevant to global climate, as the sun and its accompanying solar system rule.
Anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming has been the scare du jour of the collectivist environmental movement, socialist countries, and academic money launderers for nearly a decade now. Unlike the past Y2K scare, ozone elimination, and avian flu, efforts to combat global warming will have long-term, serious, negative impacts on the citizens of the world, whose quality of life, especially in the poorest nations, will be disastrously worsened.
It will not be possible to read Unstoppable Global Warming without being convinced a sham is being perpetrated on society. Even a 30-minute perusal of the text will impress the average unbrainwashed person that despite Gore’s beautiful pictures of heaving ice flows in both his movie and book, man is not the culprit behind climate change. Singer and Avery’s well-chosen book title alone should give the thinking person pause.
In the opening chapter, “Is Humanity Losing the Global Warming Debate?” Singer and Avery explain how the ratio of two isotopes of oxygen allows us to date the age in which air bubbles were trapped in ice, and that with almost a million years of ice cores we can readily tell that periodic warming of the Earth has occurred persistently almost every 1,500 years.
That obviously does not square with efforts to get us to reduce our use of cars, air conditioners, and fertilizer in order to reduce carbon in our atmosphere. Technological advances have increased our life expectancy by 30 years during the past century, but now we are being asked to give much of it up and return to organic farming, which was able to support only 1.5 billion people 100 years ago.
If we gave up high-yield farming, as many global warming alarmists desire, we would need to clear all the world’s forests to sustain our current food demands, and thus eliminate about half of the world’s wildlife.
[..]
Singer and Avery document the exhaustive data search they performed to confirm conclusively the existence of a 1,500-year warming cycle. They grappled with the 100,000-year elliptical cycle of the Earth’s orbit, the 41,000-year axial tilt cycle of the Earth, and the 23,000-year precessing or wobble cycle.
In addition to those cycles, they thoroughly document the most influential cycle of all: the 1,500-year solar cycle that drives most of the Earth’s climate cycle.
The authors shatter the greenhouse gas theory, making it clear humanity’s modest addition to the atmosphere’s small amount of carbon dioxide does not add up to a significant alteration in temperature.
In obliterating the Kyoto Protocol as a construct to change anything, the authors uncover a suppressed report from the federal government of Canada, which concluded that country’s expenditure of $500 million to reduce greenhouse gases was “largely wasted, producing neither a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions nor the development of new, cleaner technologies.”
The review goes on, but I think that’s enough for now.
Incidentally, there is a particular blog which links here, authored by a person who appears to be a believer in the theory of anthropogenic global warming (I assume that’s what they mean when they refer to global warming as a debacle). I haven’t named them or linked to them today, because I want to see if this post enough to prompt them to remove their link to me in a burst of frustration, or preferably register here and refute me.
Samuel
March 17th, 2008 at 11:17am
The Queenslanders who were watching State Focus, Southern Cross Ten’s current affairs program, yesterday at 8:30am would have received a treat. They were watching Mike Frame’s first State Focus program.
To the same extent, 2CC’s listeners heard Mike Frame’s final show yesterday between 7am and 9am. Mike has now left 2CC after about five years as a weekend presenter and fill-in weekday presenter on the station.
Mike is no stranger to Southern Cross Ten, having co-hosted their coverage of the 2006 Black Opal
I spoke to Mike on Saturday at Bunnings Warehouse in Belconnen and he seemed to be quite happy with the move, and especially the fact that he won’t have to be awake before sunrise on the weekend any more. Best of luck Mike, hopefully you can fill-in on the ACT version of State Focus one day.
Samuel
March 17th, 2008 at 10:44am
I wasn’t going to run my tips this year…but I’ve changed my mind and will be submitting all of my tips for the year before the end of the weekend.
NRL Round 1
Broncos V Panthers
Eels V Bulldogs
Knights V Raiders
Rabbitohs V Roosters
Sea Eagles V Sharks
Storm V Warriors
Titans V Cowboys
Tigers V Dragons
Samuel
March 14th, 2008 at 07:31pm
Good morning John,
I can think of one catch phrase which has been a regular part of the advertising landscape for quite some time but has almost never been used in day-to-day conversation…but may used a bit more regularly in the media depending on the outcome of the US election, and that's "Ah McCain, you've done it again".
If John McCain wins the US election, then I'd be willing to bet that this saying will be a headline of The New York Times during his term.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
March 12th, 2008 at 01:30am
Good morning Clinton,
I have to agree with your comments about the Rudd government's planned advertisements against binge drinking…they won't work, because nobody will take any notice of them. In fact I think the target demographic (the under-18s) will just treat it as a case of "the adults say we shouldn't drink…well we'll show them".
And, I thought Kevin Rudd was against scare campaigns…how does an advertising campaign to ""scare the living daylights" out of binge-drinking teenagers fit in with Kevin Rudd's comments before the election about the Howard government's awful scare campaigns?
Also I think Joe Hockey would make a great federal Liberal leader…and with Brendan Nelson's approval rating lower than the unelectable Peter Costello, the sooner they switch to somebody…anybody, the better.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
March 11th, 2008 at 01:00am
I can’t find any logic for this one…(source)
BORDEAUX, France (Reuters) – The mayor of a village in southwest France has threatened residents with severe punishment if they die, because there is no room left in the overcrowded cemetery to bury them.
In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that “all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish.”
It added: “Offenders will be severely punished.”
The mayor said he was forced to take drastic action after an administrative court in the nearby town of Pau ruled in January that the acquisition of adjoining private land to extend the cemetery would not be justified.
Lalanne, who celebrated his 70th birthday on Wednesday and is standing for election to a seventh term in this month’s local elections, said he was sorry that there had not been a positive outcome to the dilemma.
“It may be a laughing matter for some, but not for me,” he said.
I suppose I can think of one explanation…actually no, I take that back…does anybody want to try and explain the thought process behind this mayor’s directive?
Samuel
March 8th, 2008 at 11:19pm
Good evening Stuart,
One does have to wonder if the same person is on duty at the weather bureau tonight as was there a few years back when you had the massive hailstorm and the only warning came after the event, and talked about "a chance of small hail".
It's extraordinary the time it takes them to issue storm warnings sometimes…if the activity started at 7:30 and they only issued the alert at 9:59 then there is something seriously wrong. Perhaps the weather channel should have issued their own warnings instead of waiting for the official alert if they have their own on-staff meteorologists and knew there was something happening, as they claimed when you interviewed them.
Enjoy your weekend (and don't get too wet).
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
March 7th, 2008 at 10:30pm
2GB’s middawn presenter (and summer Drive presenter) Jim Ball has announced that he is switching from 2GB to 2UE, to take over the middawn slot vacated by Clive Robertson. As I write this, Jim is presenting his fourth-last show on 2GB (a show which he opened with innuendo about “heading north to the competition”). He will present his final 2GB show on Wednesday March 12 and will take over 2UE’s middawn program on Monday March 17. Jim will be presenting the Monday to Friday edition of the show, with John Kerr continuing his current weekend program.
Jim Ball’s success (29.4% of the Sydney audience) in the Sydney ratings in 2005 is widely believed to be one of the reasons 2UE moved John Kerr to the weekend and gave Stuart Bocking the middawn shift in 2006. Stuart gained ground on Jim Ball in 2006 (2GB 16.9% – 2UE 12.5%). I didn’t actually notice the middawn ratings last year and it doesn’t look like radioinfo published them so I don’t know what happened, but it will be interesting to see how Jim Ball goes…I’m sure 2UE will be hoping that he brings his existing audience with him, much like former 2UE weekend middawn announcer George Gibson did when his contract wasn’t renewed in late 2005 and he jumped to 2GB, filling in for weekend middawn presenter Frank Crook (he even managed to get the interstate listeners tuned in to the webstream and calling in…I was one of them).
Actually 2UE and 2GB have an interesting middawn presenter trading history. Warren Moore was 2UE’s middawn fill-in presenter before switching to 2GB where he is now their summer evening presenter. Glenn Wheeler was quite popular on 2GB (from memory he hosted the middawn shift, but I could be wrong) before switching to 2UE where his first shift was filling in on the middawn shift. He is now 2UE’s weekend afternoon presenter. With this history, one does have to wonder if Jim Ball is hoping to also get a non-middawn shift on 2UE in the near future.
Anyway, I’m getting off-topic, Jim Ball has a website at http://www.jimball.com.au/ where he lists articles referred to in recent programs. Somehow, I think the “highlights of recent shows” page and his biography will be of more use if you’re interested in finding out about him.
Jim has been hosting 2GB’s middawn program since 1999, and interestingly has a similar philosophy to the one Stuart Bocking enforced on the middawn program; Stuarts was “If it matters to you, it matters to us” and Jim’s is “We talk to anybody about anything”. Jim, like Stuart, is also a golf enthusiast.
It will be interesting to see what happens, I welcome Jim to the syndicated middawn program and I hope it works well for him…and I have just a bit of advice for 2UE. There is no point in having good ratings in the middle of the night if everyone switches off at 5:30. You’ll never beat Alan Jones, but if you want to provide some competition, get rid of Mike Carlton and put Clive Robertson on breakfast…he was popular overnight, he was popular on ABC Classic FM’s breakfast show, and he would be good at breakfast on 2UE (he might find the hours a bit more agreeable too). I can’t comment on the performance of Sandy Aloisi but the last ratings did show that breakfast is not improving…if you want ratings during the day, then you need ratings at breakfast, and I firmly believe that with the talent of Clive Robertson available to you, he is your best option.
Now, who’s going to take over middawn on 2GB?
Samuel
March 7th, 2008 at 02:17am
A bounce message from a Japanese mail server
This is the Postfix program at host mfgw215.ocn.ad.jp.
I’m sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.
For further assistance, please contact
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.
The following sentences are Japanese.
このメールと共に返信されているメールは一つ以上の宛先に対
して配信できませんでした。
エラーメッセージの原因や対処法については下記のサイトで
ご案内しております。
http://www.ocn.ne.jp/0/faq/mail/errormail/
上記のサイトでも解決できない場合は、
へご連絡ください。
ご連絡の際には、この障害レポートを一緒にお送りください。
このメールに添付されているお客様の元のメールは削除しても
構いません。
Apart from the possibility that the person receiving the bounce message doesn’t have the Japanese character set installed and might see a string of gibberish in place of the Japanese characters (in which case they would have received all the information they needed from the English text) I can’t see any logical reason for including “The following sentences are Japanese.” in the message.
In case you’re wondering, Google’s automated translate and garble service believes that the Japanese text says:
Reply to this email with email has been the recipient of more than one pair
We were unable to deliver.
Error messages about the cause and deal with the following sites
Please show.
Http://www.ocn.ne.jp/0/faq/mail/errormail/
The site also does not solve the above case,
Please contact.
Please contact when the crash reports please send us together.
This provided in the e-mail your original email will also delete the
Fine.
Now, if they had written “The following text is intentionally nonsensical”, then I might have seen their point…at least it would rule out the possibility of a computer malfunction in favour of insane programmers.
Samuel
March 6th, 2008 at 04:21am
Good evening Stuart,
About these advertisements for the Advanced Medical Institute, I'm not in the least bit surprised that there have been complaints, I think it's one of their advertising tactics. The ads are very memorable, probably because of their somewhat objectionable and less than subtle content.
I dare say, if the ads were any less subtle, they'd be appearing in your inbox as spam.
Have a great night.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
P.S. I don't suppose you'll be attending John Kerr's lunch on the 19th by any chance?
March 5th, 2008 at 10:00pm
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