Archive for August 18th, 2009

Caltext Woolworths Weston out of unleaded petrol

No surprises in the fact that this happened on a “cheap” day. 121.9 cents per litre.

Call me cynical, but if I didn’t have other things to do, I’d set up a stakeout in the carpark opposite, and see if they unlock the unleaded bowsers before a tanker arrives.

Samuel

August 18th, 2009 at 03:09pm

Cancer Council feeling a tad unnoticed?

I don’t think there’s a better to get yourself some publicity than calling for a banning!

The World Cancer Research Fund warned parents to stop serving the processed meat, saying they could lead to bowel cancer.

Instead of a total ban on the ham sandwich, limiting the amount of processed meat a child ate was a better option, Cancer Council nutrition manager Kathy Chapman said.

“If a child is eating ham sandwiches every day they are potentially missing out on fresh vegetables and important nutrients,” she said.

Healthier fillings include tuna, salmon, egg and salad sandwiches.

Dietician Susie Burrell of Westmead Children’s Hospital in Sydney said a ham sandwich once a week was OK.

Jan Moir’s headline in the UK’s Daily Mail was good for a chuckle:

Eating a ham sarnie causes cancer? These ham-fisted food fascists are just pig ignorant

The article, which I think may actually be an opinion piece, is even better.

Surely an occasional ham baguette with spread-u-lite butter and free-range mustard can hardly be a risk?

Oh, you bet it can, says the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF). If children eat bacon, ham, salami and other types of processed meat during their formative years, it will raise the risk of them contracting cancer – bowel cancer in particular – over a lifetime.

It will also encourage a bad ham habit. The brats might get to like the evil pig meat stuff. So it is better, the charity says, that children learn to view processed meat as an occasional treat, if it is eaten at all.

In the latest in a long line of food scares, this one scares me more than most.

First, in the typical manner of these over-arching health warnings, it is so unfair, particularly on those who already have this type of cancer for no other reason than they lost out in the genetic lottery. Now they will be dismissed by some as merely selfish hot-dog guzzlers who had it coming.

Also, this is not merely a health caution, it is – if you read between the lines – sly, anti-meat propaganda. They are messing, once more, with our carnivore minds.

The WCRF claim that a recent survey has shown that two thirds of the people in Britain did not know that eating processed meat increased the risk of cancer. This, apparently, despite the scientific evidence about a link being ‘convincing’.

I like that ‘convincing’, don’t you? What I would say about that ‘convincing’ is that it is unconvincing.

And surely there is enough pressure on adults to be good parents without accusing them of poisoning their children by slipping the occasional ham-on-rye into their satchel?

I can see, perhaps, that if you bought the vilest, past-its-sell-by-date, Barbie-pink ham you could find, crammed a pound of it between two slices of sugar-rich white loaf then forced it down the gullet of little Timmy or baby Lola every school day from the moment they started nursery until the tykes graduated, then, point taken WCRF. It might not be too healthy.

Yet it is the charity’s tacit suggestion, odious and unsettling, that we are raising a generation of tongue-lolling, drooling slope-heads who will be unable to differentiate between smoked ham and smoked heroin when the moment comes.

One slice of breaded Wiltshire and the fools will be lost to civilisation. The bad karma of Parma will live with them for ever.

What the health police seem to want us to do is nurture an army of mini-Howard Hughes types in knee-socks; freakish, food dictator children who will scream at chocolate, refuse to eat anything but the purest substances and insist that their lunch is wrapped in banana leaves to avoid carcinogenic plastics or the threat of bisphenol-A from their thermos flasks.

Does that sound far-fetched or even hysterical? Well, thanks to the constant meddling of the health police and their blizzard of mixed-message warnings over the years, it has already happened.

Doctors are reporting increasing incidences of something called orthorexia nervosa; the latest fashionable boa constrictor of an eating disorder to grip the middle classes.

Described as a fixation on righteous eating, it affects mostly well-educated, middle-class men and women over the age of 30. Well, it would do, wouldn’t it? You won’t find starving tribesmen in Darfur obsessing about the organic origins of their sugar-free orange juice.
[..]
Devoted orthorexics avoid anything containing sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, yeast, soya, gluten, dairy and corn. Extreme cases will also avoid any foodstuffs that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or that contain artificial additives.

It is a little like anorexia nervosa, except with extra carbs, and followers must think they are going to live for ever. If you waved a bacon sarnie under their noses, they would faint with horror.
[..]
Searching every day for fresh supplies of things like soy milk, wheatgrass juice, wild Tibetan goji berries, pure premium coconut water, hempseed and organic grain quinoa? It must be exhausting.

Brilliant read. I strongly recommend reading the rest of it.

Samuel

August 18th, 2009 at 01:19pm

You were there, therefore you did it!

One of my peculiar dreams…

This dream takes place at about 4am. I was walking east on Batman Street in Braddon approaching the intersection with Gooreen Street when I heard a large amount of yelling from down the road near Gorman House. I turned around to take a look and saw a lot of police cars arriving at the scene…one of the police officers pointed a magnifying glass in my direction, and I decided to leave the area.

Sure enough, a police car zoomed up the street and I was stopped by the police who wanted to know why I was walking in the area and why I had tried to leave the area when they spotted me. I informed them that I was merely out for a walk, which is not an uncommon thing for me to do at 4am, and that I had decided to leave because I was getting cold. They did not like the answer, and yelled “you were there, therefore you did it, and you watch The Bill so you know your rights, and you’re coming with us”.

I was taken back to a place which was supposedly the Civic Police Station but looked more like Sun Hill Police Station, I was then yelled at by Kenny Koala and then (in my mind proving that this was actually Sun Hill) Superintendent John Heaton appeared, apologised for my arrest, informed me that they had caught the person who was responsible for the crime (I still have no idea what it was) and that I would be given a plane ticket to get home, from Civic to Reid.

The dream continued though, as I was unable to leave as none of the doors would unlock, prompting Supt. Heaton to turn on the TV and ring the TV shopping number to order in food while they waited for Kevin Rudd to ring the locksmith, which “usually takes a week or two as Wayne Swan likes to have the tax office audit them first”.

The dream then ended.

Samuel

August 18th, 2009 at 11:53am

Alison Carabine off to the ABC

As reported in multiple places, Fairfax Radio’s chief political correspondent Alison Carabine is off to the ABC, specifically to ABC Radio National’s breakfast show with Fran Kelly, which should be quite interesting as Alison is often accused of having a right-wing bias, and Fran is often accused of having a left-wing bias.

Alison Carabine
Alison Carabine at the National Press Club’s debate between John Howard and Kevin Rudd in 2007. Picture credit: Channel Nine

Personally I think Alison is one of the best political reporters of recent times and is the most impartial reporters for the electronic media in the Parliament House Press Gallery. 2UE, other Fairfax owned stations, and other stations which take news from the Fairfax Radio Network will be poorer for her loss. Radio National have picked up a great reporter…hopefully Alison can retain her reporting excellence in that peculiar environment.

Samuel

1 comment August 18th, 2009 at 11:33am

Ken Sparkes and Rowan Barker on 2UE

Radionews.com.au is carrying the curious news that Ken Sparkes (former 2UE voiceover man…and still doing the intro for their news bulletins if I’m not mistaken) will be filling in for Pete Graham on 2UE’s Saturday Night Live show for the month, and Rowan Barker, formerly 2GB’s breakfast newsreader, will be filling in for John Kerr over the same period.

Nothing on Fairfax Syndication’s “temporary format changes” page yet…but that’s hardly surprising.

Samuel

1 comment August 18th, 2009 at 11:09am

To Order

Some days I just love spammers. Who here remembers that post last year about the people who had scattered traffic cones across Coranderrk Street? Well a spammer found it yesterday by googling “traffic cones au” and subsequently sent me the following email.

from Jerry Johnson revjerryjohnson500@yahoo.com
to samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com
date Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 5:41 AM
subject To Order
signed-by yahoo.com

Dear Valued Customer,
Hello This is Rev Jerry Johnson and I want to purchase 500 quantities of Traffic Cones with it’s description as follow,

Material: Vinyl
Width: 11-1/2″
Depth: 11-1/2″
Height: 18″

Let me hear back from you with good price on this product and Also advice me on the forms of payment that you accept. Hope to hear from you soon.

Best regards,
Rev Jerry Johnson.

Things is, based on the headers, this email was actually sent through Yahoo webmail. Either the spammers are becoming less efficient and manually sending message in order to get more of them past spam filters, or somebody just decided to continue the fun of that blog post.

Either way, it amused me considerably when I saw it.

Samuel

August 18th, 2009 at 07:52am

Aircheck Sunday Tuesday: AIR News, 5pm, April 6, 2009

Ain’t migraines wonderful…you have half a dozen things planned for the day, and you get none of them done. It’s wonderful!

Anyway, without an ado or anything else getting in the way, this aircheck comes from the afternoon of the 6th of April, when news of the Abruzzo earthquake was just starting to filter through.

[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/AircheckSunday/AIRNews20090406-1700.mp3]
Download MP3

Incidentally, this Saturday marks the day on which I can release a particular aircheck under the three month rule, so there will be an out of cycle Aircheck Sunday on Saturday.

Copyright notice: Copyright on this audio is jointly held by Samuel Gordon-Stewart and Australian Independent Radio News and is made available for personal use, and “fair use” as defined by copyright legislation only. This audio may not be redistributed without the prior written permission of either copyright holder.

Samuel

August 18th, 2009 at 07:27am


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