Clippity clippity clop
The horses wouldn’t go in the gate
The starter couldn’t start the race
The punters were sad
The bookies were mad
So the jockeys went and ran the race
The horses were pleased
The punters appeased
Clippity clippity clop
Samuel
2 comments May 23rd, 2024 at 05:01am
Squeakity squeakity mouse
The mouse is in the house
The cheese that’s there
Might not stay there
Squeakity squeakity mouse
Samuel
2 comments May 21st, 2024 at 05:00am
Canberra is rather well-known from its road markings at the point where two lanes merge which read “LANE ONE FORM”, a directive which seems rather unwise to disobey given the bureaucracy which issued it seems to have a loose grasp on the English language and would be likely to misunderstand any attempt at offering up an excuse and fine you for some other breach in addition to failing to LANE ONE FORM.
On a recent journey around the suburban streets with Pebbles and Shyley, I found a marking which provided some insight into the origin of this backwards bureaucracy…and it is a place which sounds unwelcoming.
They come in their vehicles from the place known only as Beware. As Bernard Woolley so eloquently noted in Yes Minister in regards to the Greeks, “It’s obvious, really: the Greeks would never suggest bewaring of themselves, if one can use such a participle (bewaring that is)” and the same could surely be said of the bureaucrats who write backwards in this way. So if it is not the bureaucrats we should bewaring of (yes Bernard, one can use such a participle) then it must be their location.
There must be an awful lot of red tape emanating from Beware, in addition to vehicles carrying bureaucrats full of backwards phrases. Backwards red tape; now that is a terrifying prospect.
Samuel
March 5th, 2024 at 05:25am
It really is hard to take ASIO’s annual threat assessment statements seriously. Each year they seem to become more detached from reality and read more like one of my dreams than anything which could actually have happened or be a plausible concern about something which might happen.
This year’s statement made me laugh hysterically for a few minutes. In it, there are details of a supposed foreign group of spies who were apparently doing exactly what you would expect them to do: posing as legitimate business-people, bureaucrats, diplomats etc, trying to connect with people who are in some way connected to government or politics and offering them seemingly real consulting roles so that they can then be subtly probed for more sensitive information. Nothing remarkable in this. It’s exactly what you would expect foreign spies to do, and exactly what I expect our own spies at ASIS are doing overseas.
The real laugh came in the form of how they thwarted the threat from a group ASIO laughably dubbed “The A-Team”
We confronted the A-team directly. Late last year, the team leader thought he was grooming another Australian online. Little did he know he was actually speaking with an ASIO officer – the spy was being spied on, the player was being played. You can imagine his horror when my officer revealed himself and declared, “we know who you are. We know what you are doing. Stop it or there will be further consequences.”
An utterly terrifying digital finger-wagging in an online chat. “Stop being naughty or we’ll do something about it!”. ASIO expect the public to take this nonsense seriously?
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess goes on…
Like other public servants, spies are required to tell their security teams about suspicious approaches so I sure hope the team leader lodged a contact report!
That’s quite an assumption to make. Assuming that policies and procedures for foreign government workers are the same as for Australian government employees. Naive would be an understatement. I’m sure that the foreign spy, receiving such an empty threat, laughed as much as I did when I read it.
The media is reporting it as “job done, threat averted” but Mr. Burgess continues and confirms that, actually, they didn’t stop much of anything.
We decided to confront the A-team and then speak about it publicly as part of a real-world, real-time disruption. We want the A-team to know its cover is blown. We want the A-team’s bosses to know its cover is blown. If the team leader failed to report our conversation to his spymasters, he will now have to explain why he didn’t, along with how ASIO knows so much about his team’s operations and identities.
I want the A-team and its masters to understand if they target Australia, ASIO will target them; we will make their jobs as difficult, costly and painful as possible.
In other words, “we don’t think they stopped when we wagged our finger at them, and we want them to know that if we catch them doing it again, we will wag our finger at them again”.
To be fair, earlier in the story Mr. Burgess did mention that they stopped a handful of Australians from communicating with the foreign spies, although it’s notable that some of those people apparently knew they were dealing with foreign spies and were happy to provide them with information, so I’m sure those people will be able to recommence communications through other means. About the only thing which can really be done is to remove their access to secret information, but given that in one of those cases the information was about the internal machinations of a political party and not secret government information, it’s hard to see how it is any of ASIO’s business, and is in fact quite an overreach on ASIO’s behalf. There is really no difference between that type of information being given to and reported on by the media and read by foreign governments, and just being given directly to foreign governments. It is not a state secret and none of ASIO’s business who knows it. That this is apparently their crowning achievement for the year makes one wonder about the half a billion dollars or more of taxpayer funds that ASIO receives every year, and what other more useful things it could be spent on.
Quite frankly the whole thing is either absurd because it has been made up as security theatre propaganda, or absurd because all they have done is prove ASIO has no real ability to stop foreign spying and are in fact spying on Australians themselves more than the foreign spies are.
The whole thing is laughable.
Samuel
February 29th, 2024 at 07:28am
Tired of every bit of news in the world being about the Chinese Bioweapon? Same here, which makes it even stranger that I haven’t written about anything else this week.
Here’s a snapshot of some other news of note to break the monotony.
Dog learns to drive, leads to high speed pursuit
A resident of the western US state of Washington was arrested following a high-speed chase that left officers dumbfounded after they found the man’s pit bull behind the wheel.
The incident unfolded Sunday afternoon after police received calls about a driver hitting two vehicles in an area south of Seattle and then speeding away, state trooper Heather Axtman told AFP.
She said the emergency services subsequently got multiple calls about a car traveling erratically at more than 100 miles per hours (160 kilometers per hour).
Axtman said that as officers gave chase, they got close to the vehicle — a 1996 Buick — and were shocked to see a pit bull in the driver’s seat and a man steering and pushing the gas pedal from the passenger side.
The pursuit ended after police deployed spike strips and arrested 51-year-old Alberto Tito Alejandro, who was booked on multiple felonies including driving under the influence of drugs.
“When we took him into custody… he admitted to our troopers that he was trying to teach his dog to drive,” Axtman said.
(h/t Yahoo News and AFP)
The dog was not charged.
—
An artificial intelligence can accurately translate thoughts into sentences, at least for a limited vocabulary of 250 words. The system may bring us a step closer to restoring speech to people who have lost the ability because of paralysis.
Joseph Makin at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues used deep learning algorithms to study the brain signals of four women as they spoke. The women, who all have epilepsy, already had electrodes attached to their brains to monitor seizures.
Across the four women, the AI’s best performance was an average translation error rate of 3 per cent.
(h/t New Scientist)
Thought crimes here we come.
—
Pestilence time!
Rampaging monkeys stealing drinks in Thailand
Bats fall from the sky in Israel
More rampaging monkeys, this time in India
Locusts attack Africa and the Middle East
—
“Many of the robocalls were made by foreign fraudsters impersonating government investigators and conveying alarming messages, such as: the recipient’s Social Security number or other personal information has been compromised or otherwise connected to criminal activity; the recipient faces imminent arrest; the recipient’s assets are being frozen; the recipient’s bank and credit accounts have suspect activity; the recipient’s benefits are being stopped; the recipient faces imminent deportation; or combinations of these threats,” the Justice Department said in an announcement.
“Each of these claims was a lie, designed to scare the call recipient into paying large sums of money. These calls led to massive financial losses to elderly and other vulnerable victims throughout the United States.”
The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York entered orders in two separate civil actions that bar eight individuals and companies from “continuing to facilitate the transmission of massive volumes of fraudulent robocalls to consumers.”
(h/t World Net Daily)
That’s all well and good, but verifying the source of calls on an international phone network is pretty much impossible, and the scammers have proven that any time they get blocked they just change the route their calls take. The only way to effectively stop it is real-time monitoring of the content of the calls, and that’s not something the phone companies or the government have the resources to do, and the invasion of privacy outweighs the benefits significantly.
—
Many places which preach “mental health” tout Yoga as a path to a better mind, but is Yoga really worth the risk to your soul?
3. Spiritual deception: There is a satanic influence behind the practice of yoga. The “power” unleashed through the practice of yoga is called the “kundalini” (meaning serpent power). Yet a serpent is a symbol of Satan (see Gen. 3, Rev. 12).
4. Spiritual transfer: Serious students of yoga usually desire something called shaktipat (a guru’s power to transmit a spiritual awakening of the kundalini). Yet this is nothing more than the transference of a demon spirit. It can result when the word “OM” is chanted, or by assuming various yoga postures that are dedicated to Hindu deities.
6. Spiritual endorsement: Even if a yoga class is seemingly benign with no spiritual emphasis and no Hindu trappings; and the teachers are Christian and Christian worship music is played, still, by participating in a “yoga” class, Christians are endorsing a non-Christian belief system. That is wrong and an insult to the Lord Jesus Christ.
(h/t Charisma News)
It became obvious to me that there was an evil force pushing Yoga in this world when suddenly over the last couple of years, workplaces started encouraging it and running lunchtime sessions at the same time that various psychologists all started to promote it, and all of them in unisen without being prompted, had as their first selling point “it’s not a religious activity”. Most religious folk would see straight through that, but the non-religious are the ones who are truly vulnerable here. They don’t believe in demons so they don’t know when they’re being influenced or used by them, and they have no idea how much Yoga activities open them up to being used. People who believe have a chance to recognise the signs of demon attack and defend themselves against it, but the non-believers get used without knowing it, and the damage they can unwittingly inflict on the world in that state is immense.
—
And some good news from the Mythical Man Made Global Warming alarmists. Even their attempts to explain why the earth isn’t warming the way their models predicted just end up proving they have no idea what’s going on.
If we accept the study, climate models calibrated against pre-1980 temperatures are running way too hot, because in the pre-1980s period the anthropogenic global warming signature was being augmented by the deterioration of the ozone layer.
I’m not talking about a small calibration error. if the ozone layer recovery is strong enough to stop
southern warming in its tracksthe expansion of the Hadley Cell and contraction of the jetstream, given the vast amount of CO2 we have dumped into the atmosphere in the last 20 years, then the deterioration of the ozone layer in the years leading up to the 1980s may have contributed substantially to the pre-1980s observed warming.On the other hand, accepting the study means accepting that two powerful opposing forcings can almost perfectly balance each other for two decades when they move into opposition to each other. It is not impossible that two independent forcings have the same magnitude, but it is not terribly likely either. The easiest way to explain two powerful independent opposed forcings which just happen to perfectly balance each other, without the uncomfortable coincidence of perfect balance, is to assume neither forcing actually exists.
(h/t Watts Up With That)
Natural cycles, just as those of us who follow empirical evidence rather than outcomes of models have been saying for years.
—
So there you go, a snapshot of other news around the world. It might be hard to find when every news outlet in the world seems to be focussing entirely on one story, but it’s there if you look hard enough. And it’s important to look, because it’s usually in times of distraction that some of the most egregious news in the world slips through unnoticed.
Samuel
2 comments April 1st, 2020 at 05:22am
I’m off sick from work at the moment, so this seems just a little bit suspicious.
US President (and a great president he is) Donald Trump held a rally in Orlando, Florida today to kick off his re-election campaign. Among the 20,000 people inside Amway Center and many thousands more watching on screens outside, was this person who managed to be in shot right behind the president.
Is my absence from work merely a cover for jetting off to the States?
While I have assured my boss that it is not me, I have to wonder if it is? You see, I would very much like to help out with the 2020 campaign but I know I won’t have time. So, I would like to think that in the future when I have access to time travel, I will travel back in time to assist the campaign and attend this rally. Given an astrologer did forecast a few years ago that I would become the world’s most powerful wizard, it is not beyond the realm of possibilities.
Interesting twist to time travel technology: you revert to your age in the time to which you travel, limiting the range of available time travel to times in which you plausibly could be alive.
Samuel
4 comments June 19th, 2019 at 05:48pm
The following is from an email to 2GB’s Luke Grant, filling in for Michael McLaren
The UN really does stand for “useless nonsense”. How do they come to the conclusion that Julian Assange has been arbitrarily detained when he is only confined to the Ecudorian embassy by his own choice. The British police aren’t detaining him in there…he is detaining himself, so the UN should be ruling against him.
I hope he does get arrested. Both he and his alleged victim in Sweden deserve a fair trial. I also would not be upset if he ends up facing the US authorities because his actions with Wikileaks were well beyond being a whistleblower.
Have a good weekend (although I guess you’re working just as I am).
Samuel
February 5th, 2016 at 04:47am
Sometimes I wonder and worry about how little curiosity people seem to have, and how accepting they are of statements from authorities which say absolutely nothing. What is happening to the west of Los Angeles International Airport right now is a perfect example.
The airspace to the west of LAX, over the ocean, is being shut down at night for some secret military operation. Normally, to limit night over residential areas, flights at night use this airspace, but those night flights are now being diverted over populated areas, so it is understandable that residents are a bit upset about the extra noise but it seems peculiar that the airport and not the military are being made the scapegoat for this anger by being thrust in front of the media to explain the situation while the military keep right out of the public eye.
We clearly understand that neighbors and communities east of the airport will experience noise and we apologize for that,” said Nancy Castles, LAX public relations director.
The military is not saying what exactly is causing the change, and LAX claims it’s also in the dark. Castles said all they know is planes can’t be flying at low altitudes to our west.
(h/t Jory Rand, ABC7 Los Angeles)
Having watched the video of the ABC7 report, I think the airport people know more than they are saying and are probably restricted from saying any more, but that’s a little beside the point. What really intrigues me is how little the residents interviewed by ABC7 seem to care that there is something weird happening a short distance from their homes.
One resident interviewed by ABC7 (seen in the video but not quoted in their article) seemed to be annoyed by the extra noise but not concerned at all about the cause, while another came up with this pearler of a statement which I think is sadly indicative of the attitudes of many when it comes to things done by authorities behind a cloak of secrecy or at least minimal disclosure.
“And plus if it’s a military thing it’s a good thing, that means they’re making it safer for us so I wouldn’t let it bother me,” said Steve Devosion of Inglewood. “I’d be more interested in them not doing something about what’s going on than them doing something about what’s going on.”
Putting aside the fact that the statement is at least partially indecipherable gibberish, it seems to me that Mr. Devosion is saying that if the military or the government is doing something, it must be for the best. What exactly he imagines is going on is beyond me, but his gibberish sentence seems to indicate that he has something other than a practice in mind.
And that is exactly why I don’t understand why people are not more curious about it. If it’s not a practice drill, then what exactly is happening just off the coast that can only be dealt with at night and needs to be kept from prying eyes, and what risk does it potentially pose? Or for that matter what future risk could it be preparing for? And if it is just a practice, why does it need to be in that spot when there are better, more covert, watered areas which could be used and not cause inconvenience to civilians?
Of course I acknowledge that there are some things which should be kept secret, and this could be one of them, but even things which should be kept secret should also be met with some scepticism and inquisitiveness by the public, and yet this seems to be blindly accepted by most of the people who are the most affected by it.
It is just another example of people not applying any critical thought or analysis to a statement by something which has an authoritative status. It seems that this type of blind faith in government and pseudo-government entities (but not the political masters of these entities) is growing in our society, and I must say I am more than a bit concerned that people who refuse to think critically are becoming the majority and are reaching a point where they will vote us all in to some sort of government enslavement (a thing which comes in many forms including the “nanny state”, growing socialist policies and programs, and burdensome extra taxation to fund it all) without ever giving any thought to the consequences because they believed the promise that it was all or their safety or protection.
While I’m on the subject of the unusual things people will accept and the odd things happening near Los Angeles International Airport, have a look at this view over Los Angeles which ABC7 included in their report but didn’t bother to explain.
Image credit: ABC7 News, Friday November 6, 2015. Click the image for a larger version.
What in the heck is that light formation? Sadly, I dare say most people aren’t interested in finding out.
Samuel
2 comments November 9th, 2015 at 03:14am
I saw it a lot when I was in the US last year, especially in the colder northern states where Winter had no intention of letting up, and I did wonder how many cars are stolen because of it. My initial thought was the risk of being shot while stealing a car probably deters most casual opportunistic joyriders, but for some that risk might seem better than the risk of freezing in the elements.
BLUE SPRINGS, Mo. – Car thefts have risen drastically since the first of January in Blue Springs.
[..]
“Within the last six days, there have been eight car thefts, five of them between the hours of 5 a.m. and 7:30 a.m. on a Monday morning,” [Jennifer Dachenhausen, Public Information Officer and Crime Analyst for the Blue Springs Police Department] says. “These cars were all left unattended to warm up, before people headed to work.”
(emphasis added)
(h/t KMBZ Radio, Kansas City)
As I did a bit of driving at night in the cold and snowy bits of the US last year, I probably saw more than my fair share of unattended cars which had been left running. The time which struck me as being most peculiar was seeing about a dozen cars in the carpark of a 24/7 Walmart, with about eight or nine of them running unattended, at about 9pm, in the small town of Fort Dodge, Iowa. It was snowing and there appeared to be more running cars in the carpark than customers in the store, which led me to believe some of the running cars belonged to staff. The carpark was also almost devoid of people and I really doubt that anybody would have noticed if somebody had just hopped in to someone else’s car and driven off.
The article has another peculiar line which caught my attention when I heard it mentioned on KMBZ earlier today.
Since the thefts, two of the cars have been located at two different hotels in the Blue Springs area.
Could it be that tourists without their own transport, not wanting to wait in sub-freezing windy and snowy weather for a taxi, opted for a convenient but illegal method of transportation? Given how cold it gets there, I can understand if they did…not that I would endorse it, but I do understand the motivation.
Submitting insurance claims on those thefts must be a very interesting and difficult experience.
Samuel
2 comments January 7th, 2015 at 05:56pm
The Heritage Foundation, like most US organisations which can accept tax-deductible donations, is in the last stages of their end-of-year appeal. This is an important time of year for such US organisations as it is the end of the tax year for donation purposes, just like in Australia at the end of June when our tax year ends. Of course, being an Australian, I’m not eligible for any tax rebate for donating to a US organisation.
Like most organisations, Heritage is flooding supporters with email requests for donations, and including a link to the donation form on their website. Unfortunately this form has a bug which causes it to not handle transactions involving non-US credit cards properly. The transaction will succeed, but the page will claim it was declined and advise you to check the address you entered. It wasn’t until the third attempt that I worked this out…so yes, silly me did just give them triple the donation I meant to give.
The good news is that Heritage believe they can reverse the unintended payments…but not until Monday morning their time when some of their senior staff are back on deck, and by then I figure it will cost them extra in fees because my bank will have finished processing the payments, so I won’t bother and instead will just not donate to them for a while. I will call them back on Monday to make sure their senior staff are aware of the issue though.
So, if you’re using a non-US credit card and want to donate to The Heritage Foundation, their website buries a contact number ((800) 546-2843) and a link to a PayPal page (to which I won’t link…if you want to use it, go via the above link to the Heritage website rather than trusting a direct link to PayPal from my site) half way down an FAQ page. If only I’d seen that earlier.
Meanwhile I was also going to donate to Hillsdale College’s end-of-year campaign, but their website doesn’t accept non-US postal addresses (due to the same problems which Heritage have, perhaps?) and they have to be called by phone. Unfortunately they went home before 5PM eastern time, so that will have to wait until next week.
I did, however, donate to the Institute Of Public Affairs‘ end-of-year campaign (although why they have one at the end of the year, apart from it being a nice date, escapes me).
It is nice to start 2015 on a conservative note by supporting these organisations, even if it is requiring more effort than I was expecting.
Samuel
2 comments January 1st, 2015 at 08:46am
Northbourne Avenue, for a brief moment this afternoon, may have been the most secure road in Canberra…
Eight Wilson Security cars in high-vis livery. Quite a sight.
Samuel
October 22nd, 2014 at 05:20pm
An email sent to 2UE’s George and Paul shortly before I left Petaluma, and scheduled to appear here at the start of their show (9am Canberra time, 2pm California time).
Good morning George & Paul.
I realise that you’re not on-air for another four hours or so, but I’m about to embark on an approximately nine-hour drive from Petaluma (a tad north of San Francisco) to Las Vegas and thus might not have a moment to send this to you, although I will listen online, mobile reception pending.
I thought you might like this story which I heard on US radio this morning from the Portland, Oregon area about a truly bizarre 911 call.
From http://www.kgw.com/news/Man-calls-911-after-wife-cant-get-jacket-off-245255581.html
Man calls 911 after wife’s zipper gets stuck
BEAVERTON — Each week, Washington County posts bad examples of 911 calls in its “You called 911 for that?” campaign.
The campaign is designed to draw attention to the dangers of non-emergency calls that tie up 911 lines. This week’s call really lives up to the hype.
OPERATOR: 911, Police Fire and Medical.
CALLER: Yeah we got a problem here. My wife is struggling in her jacket and can’t get it off. I want 911 here immediately.
OPERATOR: Is she not breathing?
CALLER: She’s alright, she just can’t get her [expletive] jacket off.
Just in case you were wondering, the fire department responded, rescued the woman and saved the jacket.
KGW Newschannel 8 also have the audio of the 911 call on their website at the above address if you want a bit of a laugh.
Anyhoo, have a great weekend…this country will get to the weekend eventually but for now I’ll enjoy a long Friday road trip.
Regards,
Samuel
Temporarily not of Canberra
February 15th, 2014 at 09:05am
I nearly fell off my chair the other night when I heard a radio PSA from the US Government’s Environmental Protection Agency (the massive bureaucratic nightmare that it is) which spent 30 seconds advising listeners that vacuuming the floor of your house is a good idea. Good heavens Uncle Sam’s overbearing cousin…really? I would never have guessed.
But then, when I thought it couldn’t get stranger, Jim Ball brought my attention to this bizarre idea from the gigantic unelected government known as the bureaucrats who seem to wield most of the power in the European Union. They’ve decided to take decisive action on that most pressing issue: overpowered vacuum cleaners.
Under European Commission ‘eco’ rules that will come into force next September, the power of new vacuum cleaners must not exceed 1,600 watts.
That figure will be lowered further to 900 watts by 2017. Current cleaners boast an average of 1,800 watts.
The move angered manufacturers, who say it will do nothing to make cleaners more environmentally friendly and will simply reduce efficiency in the home.
[..]
Critics say cleaners satisfying the new rule may use less power, but householders will have to use them for longer so they are likely to use the same amount of electricity in the long run.
(h/t Lucy Osborne, Daily Mail)
So people will either spend double the amount of time cleaning, reducing productivity, or they’ll live in dirtier homes. Maybe the EU will be able to put together a European version of the EPA’s radio spot…at least people will have something to listen to while they spend those extra hours cleaning then.
Samuel
January 31st, 2014 at 06:35am
Today’s Fairfax Radio News national 12pm eastern bulletin had an interesting story about how dogs can help people to de-stress at the end of a busy day. It featured a vet by the name of Dr. David Neck who was talking about how going to the park with your dog can be fun for both you and the dog.
No problems so far, and I have to admit that it wasn’t the content of the story which caught my attention as, seeing as I have dogs, the fact that it can be fun to play with dogs is not news to me. What caught my attention was the name of the vet. Dr. Neck? Really? For some reason there seem to be a lot of medical professionals with body parts in their name. Dr. Andrew Foote (not spelled “foot”, but it’s pronounced “foot”) is a prominent doctor here in Canberra who pops up in the media regularly, and there are others in various news reports around the world. This always seems to catch my attention for some reason and I wanted to check if I had misheard it.
It seems that I heard correctly. Dr. David Neck is a vet in Cottesloe in Western Australia. With that out of the way, I went in search of the story which I had heard in the news…but I couldn’t find it from a Google News search. That’s not uncommon, especially for press releases which are released to the media on a weekend when fewer staff are on-hand in most places and insignificant press releases are more likely to be ignored.
A general search for the story did lead me to something rather odd. It seems to have disappeared from the website recently, but Google cached the website of the Australian Veterinary Association on the 8th of July, which is just short of three weeks ago. At that time, the website carried a press release dated Wednesday, 25 July 2012 which is very familiar.
Media release
Furry friends help humans to de-stress
Wednesday, 25 July 2012
With Lifeline’s Stress Down Day coming up on 27 July, the Australian Veterinarian Association (AVA) is reminding people how important pets are in keeping us healthy and happy.
“Research shows that people who own pets are healthier and happier as they provide a sense of well-being and allow people to feel a part of their community said Dr David Neck, President of the Australian Small Animal Veterinary Association, a special interest group of the AVA.
“Those who live in cities and have stressful jobs can really benefit from having a four legged friend to come home to.
“A pet staring up at you when you come home asking for that pat of recognition can help to put everything in perspective.
“I get a real kick out of being greeted by my dog Fonti at the end of a hard day.
“Her affection is boundless. She offers love, companionship and a non-judgemental ear, all for a bit of food and attention.”
For many people one of the best ways to de-stress is through regular moderate exercise, which is exactly the sort of exercise you get interacting with your devoted companion.
“Walking your pet in your neighbourhood gives you a strong appreciation of your environment and gets you out talking to others who are doing the same thing.”
Dr Neck said that like humans, animals need to interact and communicate in order to remain healthy.
“This becomes a win win. Pets need regular exercise, socialisation, a healthy diet and love and attention and they’ll give back four-fold.
“It’s important to ensure you can provide all of these things before getting a pet and choose the right pet to suit your lifestyle.”
It continues after this with various links to websites of the Australian Veterinary Association, and phone numbers for media enquiries…but doesn’t that sound very much like the story which I heard on the radio this afternoon? It is effectively the same story. Dogs are nice. Exercise is beneficial for humans and dogs. Exercising with your dog will help you to de-stress. Dr. Neck has plenty of quotes. It’s the same story!
So, my question is, was the press release re-issued this year? Or did Fairfax Radio News recycle it with a grab of Dr. Neck from last year. I find the latter scenario highly unlikely, but then I also can’t see why roughly the same press release would be issued almost exactly a year after the original press release.
It has been a bit of an odd few days for news reports of insignificant things. Among other things:
The list goes on, but I can only take so many pointless studies at a time before I start to yearn for my tax dollars to be spent on more useful things…and besides which, if we give it a year, a whole new set of studies will tell us the opposite of these studies, and tell us the same things as these studies. I wonder if we will also hear about the benefits of going for a run with the dog in a year from now?
Samuel
2 comments July 27th, 2013 at 01:15pm
I’m in the middle of planning a trip (OK, closer to the start than the middle) to the US at the moment, and it occurs to me that my profile, plus my writings from earlier today, could just mean that a computer somewhere in the FBI or the CIA wants an agent to dig a little deeper.
From the perspective of a computer which has been programmed to look out for key words and phrases, this extract from my blog post about the postal system earlier today might seem a tad suspicious.
I would [..] embed some [..] devices in items I post
Yes, the statement was about tracking devices, and one would hope that an FBI agent would see that and dismiss the computer’s concerns, but I still think the computer would be worried about talk of posting devices and embedding things. The blog post also mentioned ricin, a poisonous substance which was mailed to the US President and a senator today, and so chatter about it would probably be high on the priority list for intelligence-gathering computers.
If I was putting together an automated system which looks out for suspicious activity of the terrorist kind, and was mainly basing it on key words and phrases, I would probably set it up so that after identifying something as potentially suspicious, it would then take another look over it for other, less immediately obvious, suspicious phrases which might indicate a plot or some sort of code. Looking back over that blog post, I listed my postal address in an unusual format:
a post office box at the Dickson post office (1272
And talked about the inside of government buildings:
They finally found it somewhere in the PO
and
parcels which are [..] stored in the post office’s back rooms
and
wandering back out to the back rooms
A drug inference could even be drawn from
Nattie did give the letter a good sniff
or possibly an explosives inference if the computer works out that Nattie is a dog.
Further examination of my blog brings up photos of phone towers, electricity substations, and a map of a powerline which feeds a government building.
Yes, an FBI computer would have good reason to think I’m suspicious. And a profiler might be concerned when they learn that my trip to the US is so that I can visit people, most of whom are conservatives (Terrorism center at West Point warns against danger of American limited-government activists and ‘far right’ – The Blaze, January 18), many are Christian, of which some are Catholic (Army training manual labeled Evangelicals and Catholics as religious extremists – Todd Starnes, Fox News Radio, April 5), and I intend on visiting many places in rapid succession, including some important building in Washington D.C. I have also made my disdain for President Obama clear on many occasions (although I think I’ve made it clear, and if I haven’t then I will now, that I do not want him to come to any harm…instead I wanted him to be voted out, and now want him to finish his term and be remembered for being a President with policies which ultimately failed and sparked a need for a serious return to conservative governing principles).
Obviously, this doesn’t add up to anything suspicious, but I can see how, at a time when security services are on edge, the combination of my profile and writings could be enough to make a computer suspicious, and perhaps make security services want to take a closer look at me. Dare I say it, I won’t be surprised if I get pulled aside at Customs in the US next year for a little chat…in fact, I’ll be a little disappointed if it doesn’t happen.
All of this reminds me of a story from the start of this year about the FBI scanning emails for certain words and phrases which apparently are common in messages about fraudulent activity. The words and phrases were “gray area”, “coverup”, “nobody will find out”, “do not volunteer information”, “write‑off”, “failed investment”, “off the books”, “they owe it to me”, “not ethical”, and “illegal”.
Glenn Beck had some fun with this on his radio show and jokingly suggested that they (Glenn or one of his co-hosts) should send an email containing all of those words just to confuse an FBI computer. Sure enough, co-host Pat Gray sent the message, and went to some lengths to make some of the phrases fit.
Dear Ahmed,
I’m sitting here gazing up at a cloudy grey area of the sky wondering how to cover up this blemish that I have on my nose. As a dermatologist, I thought you might have an idea of what I could use so nobody will find out that I’ve broken out again like a teenager. If you do not volunteer the information, I’ll probably have to see a specialist.Up until yesterday, I’ve been using Clearasil on it but I realized that I can write off that failed investment of $4.99 because it didn’t work.
I wasn’t able to use the cream you prescribed for me last week because I put the jar on top of some books at my parents’ house and wouldn’t you know it, I bumped into the table that those books were sitting on and a jar fell off the books and onto the floor and broke.
My parents said that since I loaned them $20 last month, they would be happy to pay for a new prescription because they owe it to me. But I told them I wasn’t sure if it was not ethical to provide the medication again so soon.
Anyway, if you can call me on that, please call in the Walgreens at Fourth and Main as I have found that to get the one on 29th and Main, you have to make an illegal U‑turn at the light, and I don’t want to do that.
Thanks again. Whatever you can do, Dr. Ahmed.
I found it much more amusing when I heard it go to air. The video of it is embedded in the page of the above link, but it’s not working for me. Thankfully I have my own recording of it.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/GlennBeckFBILetter.mp3]
Download MP3
(Audio credit: Glenn Beck, Mercury Radio Arts, Premiere Radio Network)
Samuel
April 18th, 2013 at 01:38pm
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