Archive for July 6th, 2010

Licence numbers and expiry dates

An email to 2UE’s Stuart Bocking

Good evening Stuart,

I was most intrigued by your discussion with the lady about how she remembers her licence number and expiry date, but you don’t remember yours.

I remember my licence number and expiry date (although from the sounds of it, ACT licences have easier to remember numbers which don’t contain letters, unlike NSW licences), but I think it’s more a force of habit than a matter of willingly remembering it. I say this because I have remembered the number and expiry date of my Visa Debit card for years, simply because it’s easier to remember it than to have to pull it out and check every time I use it. The three digits on the back of the card change every time the card expires and is replaced though, so it takes me a little while to remember that each time.

I think remembering my licence number and expiry date came from remembering other cards. I also think it’s a useful thing to know just in case I’m ever pulled over and have misplaced it, as I can recite the details and hopefully waste less of my time and that of the police.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

July 6th, 2010 at 10:37pm

The secret to long life is onion sandwiches

It’s interesting to me that almost everyone who lives to a really old age or keeps working until a really old age seems to have something to which they credit their longevity, and almost without fail it is something which you couldn’t imagine a scientist saying in a thousand years.

Last week, one such story crossed my desk:

REDLANDS, Calif. — It wasn’t snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night that stopped Chester Arthur Reed from his appointed round. The mail handler just felt it was time to call it quits at age 95.

The fork lift operator retired Wednesday as the nation’s oldest postal worker, ending a career without taking a single sick day. It’s a feat he attributes to a healthy diet of watermelon, alkaline water and an onion sandwich with mayo every day.

“If everyone in the nation ate watermelons, they’d get rid of all the doctors,” Reed said.

Despite being partially deaf and walking with a stoop, Reed has worked for more years than many of his co-workers have been alive and has accrued 3,856 hours — nearly two years — of sick leave for not missing a shift in 37 years.
[..]
His military service, which included physical conditioning with pilots, is evident in the rigid discipline surrounding his health. It’s his favorite topic of conversation, said Reed’s co-worker Verna Ortiz, 50.

He believes in drinking alkaline water, to minimize acids that can damage digestive system, and eating sandwiches made “with a lot of mayonnaise and get a big slice of onion” because the vegetable is closely related to garlic, one of the healthiest foods you can eat, he said.

“He taught me to stay away from the two S’s: salt and sugar,” Ortiz said, adding she lost 10 pounds in six months by taking his advice.

In truth, I think that staying at work helps a lot of people to reach an old age happily and healthily simply by keeping active. Their eating habits certainly help, but I think an active mind has a lot more to do with it than we might realise.

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 05:59pm

Arizona have the right approach to illegal immigration

OK, so maybe I will mention immigration policies today…just not domestic policies at this time, not until later tonight anyway.

I was very pleased to see Arizona enforcing federal laws earlier this year about illegal immigration, and was hardly surprised when various federal authorities tried to stop them. It really says a lot about the supporters of illegal immigration in the Obama regime that they would rather not be seen to support illegal immigration by doing something obvious such as repealing the laws about it, but would rather just have it happen quietly and illegally by trying to stop others from enforcing the law.

I was even more pleased overnight to spot a good idea from a Republican candidate about how to handle the illegal immigrants who have already set up camp.

Ratcheting up the debate over immigration in his state, a candidate for the Arizona utilities commission is threatening to cut off power and gas to illegal immigrants if he’s elected.

“It is not a right. It is a service,” Barry Wong, candidate for the Arizona Corporation Commission, told The Arizona Republic.

The Republican candidate argues that the policy would be a cost-saving measure for consumers.

Though it would cost money for power companies to check immigration status, he said it would ultimately save money because power companies would not have to build new plants to serve the illegal immigrant community, presumably passing on that savings to consumers. His plan, if elected to the five-person commission, would be to require utilities to check immigration status.

“There is a cost ratepayers shouldn’t have to bear because of the illegal immigrant population,” he said, while acknowledging the idea would probably attract “criticism about human-rights violations.”
[..]
Wong, who was born in the United States, is the son of Chinese immigrants. He previously served in the Arizona House of Representatives.

Note that last bit. He’s descended from people who immigrated legally. The whole point about the illegal immigration debate both here in Australia, and abroad in places such as the US, is that there are legal ways to immigrate, and there are extremely good reasons why we have these rules and procedures in place. Genuine refugees are a different kettle of fish, but people who are simply illegal immigrants do not, and should not, have the right to access public facilities, be it power or other things.

If you shouldn’t be in a country, then you have no right to expect access to the various bits of the country simply because you managed to sneak in.

Samuel

2 comments July 6th, 2010 at 02:45pm

Sharron Angle

One of the keys to defeating the Barrack Obama regime is defeating his supporters in Congress. It’s not possible to vote Obama out until 2012, by which time, if left unchecked, the damage could be catastrophic and take decades to fix. It is, however, possible to vote out many of his supporters later this year…one of them is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Democrat, Nevada). In fact, it’s probably fair to say that defeating Harry Reid is one of the most important things that conservatives need to aim for.

As such, I was very pleased to see that the winner of the Republican primary was Sharron Angle, a good conservative.

Sharron appeared on The Patriot Express radio show earlier today on KLAV Las Vegas. I found it to be most interesting, and I dare say that if he had more people like Sharron in government around the world, it would be a much better place.

Here’s the audio, courtesy of Patriot Express Radio.

[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SharronAngle20100706.mp3]
Download MP3

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 11:45am

Immigration policies

I was hoping to write something about immigration policies this morning, but unfortunately Julia Gillard has been prattling on for the better part of twenty minutes so far without actually saying anything, and I don’t have time to wait for her to announce an actual policy as I have to go to work this year.

I’ll have to write something tonight, assuming that she has finished talking by then.

Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 11:28am

Memo to Canberra people

Dear persons,

That wet stuff falling from above makes your car harder to stop. Please slow down a tad. I know that you want to protect your car from the rain…but you should be more concerned about protecting it from a crash.

Regards,
Samuel

July 6th, 2010 at 09:30am


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