Posts filed under 'Bizarreness'
I just had a most unusual fault occur during my mobile phone conversation with a friend.
Mid-conversation, the call cut out, which isn’t all that unusual on its own, however at my end I received the Telstra disconnected signal (the one similar to the engaged signal, but with one tone quieter than the other), followed by the Telstra ringing signal, and then one side of another person’s phone call in which they continued to converse with the other party to their call, but seemed oblivious to my “hello? are you still there?”. It seemed that this mystery person was informing the other party to their call that somebody would be leaving at 6pm.
After about fifteen seconds of hearing one side of their call, the connection dropped completely, with my phone registering the end of the call.
Apparently, the person at the other end of my call did not hear any of this…I suspect that my phone registered the termination of the the call after the other party to my call hung up after hearing nothing for a little while.
Samuel
September 3rd, 2009 at 06:00pm
I just received two identical faxes from Malcolm Turnbull’s office, inviting me to a “media engagement” in Tomago at 10:45am. Will they pay for the speeding fines when I get caught doing 260km/h to get there?
View Larger Map
Tomago Aluminium is where the leader of the opposition will be. Do I want to know what awful publicity stunt this is?
By the way, “Media must ensure they wear the following: flat enclosed shoes (no court shoes), long trousers and long sleeves” writes nameless minion on said fax. Make that 280km/h by the time I get changed.
Who’s paying for these excess faxes which have surely been sent to every media organisation in the country. If it’s taxpayers, then it’s an outrage, as this is a regular occurrence. Malcolm…if every other politician (with the exception of the New South Wales Government) can send faxes to only the relevant places, then you can too…in fact, AAP have a service which will do it for you.
Samuel
September 1st, 2009 at 07:14am
The federal government have found something else to regulate…diets!
The Rudd Government’s Preventative Health Taskforce is understood to have called for the weight-loss industry to be regulated in a report handed down last month.
[..]
It wants a wide-ranging review of diet products and a common code of practice drawn up covering the cost, the training of counsellors and the promotion of the diets.
The Dietitians Association of Australia is backing the recommendation.
A spokesman told The Daily Telegraph all commercial diet programs should be assessed by a body of experts similar to the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which assesses drugs for safety and efficacy before they can go on sale.
The association said regulation should require businesses marketing a diet program to provide evidence to a panel of experts showing what percentage of those who used the diet kept the weight off two years after starting.
So, in other words, let’s kill the diet industry by requiring all diet programs to have a two year unprofitable trial before it can be examined by a panel of experts for some unknown period of time, after which it might, and I stress the word “might”, be able to go on sale.
The article continues with what appears to be the moronic reasoning behind the taskforce’s idea.
A Choice survey of pharmacy diet programs published earlier this year found they were successful at helping people shed kilos in a hurry if followed closely – but they did little to change a person’s lifestyle in the long term.
Errr, sorry, but that’s not what diet programs are there to do. Diet programs are there to help people lose weight, usually they will encourage a healthy lifestyle afterwards, but the staff of these diet programs can’t force people to live a healthy life after the program ends…that is a personal choice. Diet programs should not be punished by the government because people choose to return to their old ways.
You’d think that the government doesn’t have enough to do or something, so they go in search of new things to annoy us with. Seriously, roads, rates, rubbish, some schools, some emergency services, and leave us alone to make our own choices.
Samuel
August 19th, 2009 at 11:54am
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
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
Sure, I got the theme music of the two confused a bit when I was in primary school…but even I knew which show involved a genie and which show involved a witch.
At least they managed to put the right show to air.
Samuel
August 10th, 2009 at 04:25am
If we were talking about Hillary, then I would suggest that trading twenty cows for another cow probably isn’t a wise business move (although the prospect of Bill gaining twenty cows and starting a dairy farm does amuse me), however we aren’t talking about Hillary.
A Kenyan man’s offer of 40 goats and 20 cows for Chelsea Clinton’s hand in marriage may still be on the table — and Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised to convey the “very kind offer” to her daughter.
To laughter at a town hall meeting Thursday in Kenya, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria asked the U.S. Secretary of State if the Clintons had made a decision on the dowry offer. In 2000, a Kenyan man wrote to then-president Bill Clinton offering the animals in accordance with African tradition.
After a pause, Clinton said, “My daughter is her own person, very independent, so I will convey this very kind offer.”
Clinton has denied rumors that her daughter, 29, is planning to get married this summer.
Well we can’t let the plans of a zoo wedding out just yet. Mr. Zakaria might work out the story if we do that.
Samuel
August 8th, 2009 at 03:59pm
Remember that ridiculous sparring match between John Laws and Neil Mitchell last week?
Well it turns out that Lawsie came to his senses a few hours later, and asked Neil Mitchell’s answering machine to pass on an apology.
[..] the matter is unlikely to wind up in court. Mitchell told Green Guide that Laws left an apology on his answering machine the afternoon of the incident.
‘‘He said, ‘Please pass my apologies to Neil, I might have overreacted’, which was a very decent thing to do. And I left a message on his machine saying, ‘Thanks for the message, appreciate it’. It’s all over, as far as I’m concerned.’’
Who would have thought that the answering machine would become the modern-day equivalent of the legal secretary?
Samuel
August 6th, 2009 at 09:55am
I love job ads, despite the fact that most of them are of no use to me. The main reason I love them is because so many of them are written so badly that they are highly amusing.
Take this ad for a “TV Commercial Filming Production Assistant” which contains such lines as:
Currently we are looking for a person who is outstanding and happy with fast and team- work environment.
[..]
Compliment Criteria.
[..]
Assist Exe. Producer and Line Producer, Assist over all filming production procedure on location site.
[..]
The successful applicant will:
– Enjoy some hard works with co-operative mind.
– Control the balance between relaxes phase and fast working season.
But my favourite line of all…
“better don’t” just sounds like it’s supposed to read “better not”, which makes me wonder what happens if I do apply for it.
Samuel
July 21st, 2009 at 11:10pm
Apparently people who are repeating swear words can keep their hands in freezing water for longer than people who are describing tables.
That muttered curse word that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, a new study suggests.
[..]
“Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon,” said Richard Stephens of Keele University in England and one of the authors of the new study. “It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain.”
Stephens and his fellow Keele researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual’s tolerance to pain.
Because swearing often has an exaggerating effect that can overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person’s tolerance.
As it turned out, the opposite seems to be true.
The researchers enlisted 64 undergraduate volunteers and had them submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice.
The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table.
Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.
The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body’s natural “fight-or-flight” response.
[..]
The results of the study are detailed in the Aug. 5 issue of the journal NeuroReport.
Two questions:
1. Who pays for these studies?
2. Why do the printed issue dates on magazines almost never reflect the actual issue date (or even the month of issue) of the magazine?
Samuel
July 14th, 2009 at 12:38pm
Trying to work out if the manufacturer’s listed maximum speed is accurate, were we?
A motoring writer has allegedly been clocked driving a $400,000 Ferrari at more than 230km/h on a West Australian road.
Police say traffic officers pulled over 57-year-old Australian Financial Review motoring writer Rod Easdown in the West Australian wheatbelt on Monday.
The V8 Ferrari California convertible he was driving, worth more than $400,000 and reportedly one of only two in Australia, has been impounded for seven days under WA’s tough anti-hoon legislation.
A News Ltd website reported a number of motoring writers were to test drive the car in WA.
Well, that’ll slow down the reviews in more ways than one. (Sorry, I just don’t have anything serious to say about this…the story doesn’t really need commentary anyway).
Samuel
July 14th, 2009 at 10:24am
Alexa Longueira was walking down a Staten Island block and was getting ready to text message when she fell into an open sewer manhole, MyFOX NY reports.
Longueira suffered mild cuts and bruises and is expected to recover.
The teen’s mother says workers told her they left the manhole open and unattended for just seconds while they went to fetch some cones from their truck.
[..]
The Longueira family says they plan on filing a lawsuit.
Source: Fox News
So, let me get this straight…person walks down the street, not looking where they are going, falls down a hole, and wants the government to pay them for it? Wow, the logic of the people on this planet is getting weirder.
Samuel
July 13th, 2009 at 03:05am
Every now and then the police come up with a charge which makes me wonder what the people who wrote the law were thinking.
The local youth was charged with possess dangerous thing with intent to injure and intimidate police.
“Possess dangerous thing”? Not an “implement”, “object” or “item”, but a “thing”. It’s just not the sort of language you expect law writers to use is it?
Mind you, the rest of the press release was bizarre as well:
About 1:20pm, the male allegedly entered the police station and threatened staff with a bottle containing a concoction of chemicals.
After allegedly attempting to ignite the contents, the teenager was arrested and in the interests of public safety an exclusion zone was established around the premises.
Trying to ignite a “bottle containing a concoction of chemicals” to what end? And do we have any idea what sort of chemicals they were…do we even know if they were dangerous? Is it possible that the male merely was being threatening and had a bottle on non-dangerous stuff?
It’s such a shame that this case went to the Children’s Court, because the actual details of it would have been fascinating.
Samuel
July 13th, 2009 at 02:42am
Australia seems to have drifted in to the northern hemisphere, as a lost traveller in Sydney discovered:
GPS thinks I’m in a town called Narva, on the border of Estonia & Russia
Don’t worry, it’s just a result of the world getting sucked in to the black hole created by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s “global-euro-world-dollar-cent-yen-paso-Medvedev” world currency.
Samuel
July 12th, 2009 at 03:58pm
One of the many bizarre things to come out of the G8-and-then-some talkfest is this odd suggestion from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev…the hoary old chestnut of the single world currency has been floated again.
The Russian leader proudly displayed the coin, which bears the English words “United Future World Currency”, to journalists after the summit wrapped up in the quake-hit Italian town of L’Aquila.
Medvedev said that although the coin, which resembled a euro and featured the image of five leaves, was just a gift given to leaders it showed that people were beginning to think seriously about a new global currency.
“In all likelihood something similar could appear and it could be held in your hand and used as a means of payment,” he told reporters. “This is the international currency.”
Yes Mr. Medvedev, we all want to share in Zimbabwe’s inflation rate. Yes Mr. Medvedev, we want to start World War Three with the negotiations over how many “global-euro-world-dollar-cent-yen-paso-Medvedevs” our existing currencies should be worth. Yes Mr. Medvedev, I believe so strongly, utterly and thoroughly convincingly that this couldn’t possibly have anything to with the fact that an Aussie dollar can buy 25 of your Rubles whatsoever…you would never suggest anything just to get rid of that awful figure.
I have emailed the article to Maritz in the hopes that she has something to say on the matter in her column tomorrow. Although, I’m not sure if she will see the email as I think she has already left for her holiday. I hope she does though, because she isn’t a fan of Dmitry Medvedev.
Thanks to Heather Kydd for bringing this story to my attention.
Samuel
July 12th, 2009 at 03:01pm
Next Posts
Previous Posts
