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| Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 | | 10:23 pm |
Political Protests
The Youth For Life group has been demonstrating against the Abortion Law Reform Bill that was passed in August last year, it legalises abortion within 24 weeks and beyond 24 weeks if the person's health is at risk by continuing the pregnancy. I am all for people expressing their objection to legislation if they feel strongly about it, it is part of the democratic progress. However, the Youth For Life group is a spin-off of the American group, while most of the protesters where Australian, people from the US division and US citizens came here to help with the protests which included preventing patients and medical staff from entering clinics, despite the law protecting them of their right to seek medical treatment. Police eventually arrived and had to forcibly remove the protesters. I just do not think it is right for citizens of other countries to go to foreign nations and participate in political protests. Right or wrong we have a democratic process and I think political protest should be left to citizens of that nation. There is a forum to contact foreign leaders if you feel strongly, can contact most of them via mail or email. I think interfering with a foreign country's political process is stepping over the line in my opinion. | | Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | | 5:26 pm |
Earthquake
Well, more like a tremor. It is our second one in 2 weeks. Which is kinda odd for us given we are smack in the middle of a giant pacific plate. I can only remember two tremors in my whole life previous to this month. It is unlikely to be a sign of the beginning of the end, but it can't be good. :P | | Sunday, March 15th, 2009 | | 10:33 pm |
Cloverfield
I saw this movie again on TV today and while the movie wasn't any better the second time around I was thinking during the movie could we really find alien species that were of a monstrous size one day? I started to think about dinosaurs and why they were so big yet everything nowadays is so small by comparison. So I put the power of the internet to good, instead of evil. Laws of nature says bigger is better, size is an advantage be you predator or prey. Most predators leave Rhinos and Elephants alone because of size. So why has everything shrunk? Not because of the Japanese but because the experts believe our atmosphere was a lot thicker in that era, so thick it was almost 3/4 of the thickness of liquid and this gave buoyancy and allowed for larger creatures to evolve, reduced the severity of gravity. There is also a theory that there wasn't an event that wiped out life but the atmosphere started to thin over time and gravity pretty much did the rest. So while there may be Cloverfield-like aliens out there, if they landed on Earth they would likely be crippled by gravity, unless they had some kind of super-strength bones and muscles it would pretty much collapse under it's own weight because our atmosphere is thin and gravity too severe for monstrous sized creatures, much like why a blue whale can't survive on the surface for long, it relies on the buoyancy of the sea to support it's mass and no dinosaur grew to be be bigger than a blue whale. Fascinating stuff. | | Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | | 7:46 pm |
Don't mess with a Salty!
A fisherman near Darwin took some happy snaps today of a Bull Shark taking on a relatively small salt water crocodile, by relatively small I mean a 4.5m croc, err, i guess about 15 feet. Male salties often grow to around 7m and the largest one recorded in Australia was 8.5m, something like 28 feet. Most salties will dwarf even great white sharks.  How can you tell an Australian Salt water croc from an Asian one?  Tha Aussie croc drinks beer. :P | | Friday, March 6th, 2009 | | 8:27 pm |
Awww, kitties.
How cute are these new snow leopard cubs at the Zoo here in Melbourne. Going to have to check them out.  | | Friday, February 13th, 2009 | | 9:55 pm |
Bushfires
We had some really horrific bushfires here last week, 181 dead so far, several rural communities wiped out, most had very little to no warning. I remember when I lived in the country I helped out backburning during the winter and remember just how intense the heat was, it was unbelievable, like a furnace and those were controlled burn-offs. I can only imagine what people go through stuck in that kind of environment, in some places there was just a wall of flame at times over a hundred feet high traveling at high speed due to the wind and extremely dry conditions. It must be hell on earth. Seeing the images of the aftermath is just heart-wrenching, from the cars that were caught on the path of the fire and incinerated on the roads the heat was so intense that metals from the vehicles liquefied and pooled on the roads where they cooled and solidified after the fire passed. A lot of the damage was caused by fuel, most cars ignited because of the heat, even those not in the direct path of the fire. Many of the houses literally exploded as gas and other fuels ignited by the heat alone. As much as human pain and suffering bothers me, it is the pain and suffering of animals that bothers me more, so many cats, dogs and other animals that suffered varying degrees of burns, smoke inhalation or severe dehydration. When you see images of wild animals that are so exhausted and injured they let humans take care of them it really makes me sad. | | Monday, February 9th, 2009 | | 11:53 pm |
| | Monday, December 8th, 2008 | | 11:14 pm |
Merry Christmas, from the government?
In an interesting move to help stimulate the economy, our government is giving $1000 per child to parents and $1400 to each pensioner ($2100 for a couple) before Christmas with an encouragement that money is to be spent and not saved. It will cost some $10.4 billion overall but it is good to see government stimulus aimed at helping people who can use it the most rather than just injecting ridiculous sums into the business sector directly. There is also rumour with the property market cooling down the government here might be ramping up the first home owner scheme. When it first came out in 2000 you got $14k when purchasing your first home or $21k if you had a new home built, that has been scaled back significantly since the property market overheated to currently $10k for an established home and $12k for a new home. Each state government has also got the green light from the federal government to start funding major projects. In my state they have just announced a transportation and roadwork project of about $38 billion. Projects like these will help to stimulate the various manufacturing and labour based industries. Not sure how much these schemes will help to ward off the world-wide downturn/recession but I guess every little bit helps. | | Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 | | 4:23 pm |
Under the Knife
Tom, my cat goes under the knife tonight, losing the family jewels. Poor little Tommy, the sad face he gave me when I left him with the vet made me sad. :( Oh well, at least he will stop beating up the neighbours cats who are getting between him and some hot action. | | Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | | 10:43 pm |
Credit Crisis
I remember doing a job for the our government here in Australia a few years ago, part of it involved reviewing the regulation laws we have with our banking and financial sector, considered draconian by world standards, we have very tight regulations on our financial institutions. It is amazing when you think about the current events, our banks are considered amongst the best in the world when it comes to stability and strength and a large part of that is due to the tight control of the industry, regulations the banks themselves tried to get removed so they could operate more like other western banks. We have very different rules compared to the USA or Europe, very tight lending and liquidity requirements. All our banks are government guaranteed, to have that level of guarantee they need to be water-tight. There are cons associated with it, it is much harder to find financing from Australian institutions in the business sector at least. It is a high price to pay but it is better to know your money in your banks is safe and not being used on hair-brained schemes to make short-term profits to justify ridiculous remuneration packages for executives. I think the world is starting to wake up to the "Greed is good" philosophy being a flawed one. The IMF last night said the USA and much of Europe is going into recession with growth going into decline, they forecast we should hold steady at about 2.2% for 2009 which is a relatively strong position for a non-developing economy. Our close ties with China and India economically going a long way towards sheltering us from the issues faced in other western nations. All-in-all, we should be sheltered by the woes faced by our neighbours and allies. We are seeing the type of panic selling on the stock exchange, most is attributed to those who plan to retire in the short term and do not want to be holding on stock that might be undervalued for a few years. It surprises me people put themselves in such scenario so close to retirement, but alas, good financial planning advice is hard to come by it seems. | | Friday, July 4th, 2008 | | 7:02 pm |
| | Saturday, December 1st, 2007 | | 1:31 am |
Beowulf
I went and saw it at the gold class cinema, that was a first... and probably last experienced. I looked after my sister's cats for two weeks when she went away for a holiday last year so she gave me a gold class voucher. Wow, what an exciting experience being stuck in small cinema with a bunch of yuppies, I think it put me off the movie before it started. I think the whole concept of having meals at the cinema also put me off the movie. The seats were awesome, being followed everywhere by giggling hostesses was not. I think I am too set in my ways, yep, getting old... So, I decided to get back at them, I ordered popcorn for my friend, he chews popcorn like a jackhammer and is totally oblivious to the noise he makes, I could feel everyone looking around giving him a dirty look and I buried my face in my coke cup to stop myself from bursting into laughter. I'm evil that way... Oh yeah, the movie... wasn't all that impressed. I wasn't expecting a CGI movie so it was a bit of a shock and my friend looked like someone had shot him in the chest in a driveby when the realisation that the naked form of Angelina Jolle was just some nerd's overactive imagination instead of the real thing. The story was okay, but I remember seeing a low budget Scandinavian version of Beowulf, not a huge fan of reading movies in general but I kinda liked the cheap budget and more authentic look and feel of the old movie. Beowulf made it almost feel like I was watching Final Fantasy and was almost expecting Sephiroth to make an appearance in the end. It was okay but I wouldn't go see it again, or on dvd. Which is saying something as I can watch almost anything. | | Friday, November 30th, 2007 | | 12:55 pm |
Spam
I don't really care about spam emails hitting my hotmail account, mainly because I rarely check it or have anything of note sent there. But when they hit my ISP email account I get all fire and brimstone because if you don't nip it in the bud they take off like weeds in a flower bed. I like to get creative with my vengeance, it is a good release I think. Email text: Dear Beloved One. It is by the grace of God that I see today, as I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not evenmyself) but my business. Having known the truth; I had no choice than to do what is lawful and just in the sight of God for eternal life and in the sight of man for witness of God & His Mercies and glory upon mylife. I am Mrs. Rabi Aliu, the wife of Mr. Idris Aliu, I am a citizens of Tunisian. My husband worked with the Chevron/Texaco in Russia fortwenty years before he died in the year 2004.We were married for ten years without a child. My Husband died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Since his death I decided not to re-marry or get a child outside my matrimonial home, When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of 7.5 Million Pounds (Seven Million Five HundredThousand Pounds) with a Bank in Europe. Presently, this money is still with the Bank and the management justwrote me as the beneficiary that our account has been DORMANT and if I,as the beneficiary of the funds, do not re-activate the account; the funds will be CONFISCATED or I rather issue a letter of authorizationto somebody to receive it on my behalf (note that you need to activate this account) as I can not come over. Presently, I'm in a hospital in Russia where I have been undergoing treatment for esophageal cancer. I havesince lost my ability to talk and my doctors have told me that I have only a few weeks to live. It is my last wish to see this money distributed to charity organizations anywhere in the World in helping human race.Because relatives and friends have plundered so much of my wealth since my illness, I cannot live with the agony of entrusting this huge responsibility to any of them. Please, I beg you in the name of God to help me Stand-in as the beneficiary and collect the Funds from the Bank. I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money, and I am not afraid of death since I know where I am going to. I don't need any telephone communication in this regard because of my soundless voice and presence of my husband's relatives around me always. I don't want them to know about this development. I await your quick response to this mail as this is my last wish to see this funds transferred before my Death. Remain Blessed. Your Beloved Sister . Mrs. Rabi Aliu. My Reply: Dear Blessed Sister, By the grace of Allah it surely must be a miracle that from your deathbed in Russia you have been able to send me this message not from some anonymous yahoo account as you would like the heathens to believe but actually from an Australian ISP here with Optus, who funnily enough track IPs and provide them to the federal police for attempts at fraud. I have forwarded your message of mercy to your ISP and the relevant authorities, perhaps they will be able to help you out. Regards, Beloved One | | 1:28 am |
NMFC
A number of generous performers donated their time to raise money for the North Melbourne Kangaroos. I bought two tickets but couldn't be arsed going tonight so gave away the tickets I purchased to some supporters who wanted to go, the concert was sold out. Tim Rogers, the lead singer of You Am I, is a fellow supporter and helped organised the event which was very generous. The Prince of Wales was also kind enough to offer their club free of charge. It says a lot about how much things like clubs mean to people.  Judging by the drunken SMS messages I received, it was a great success. | | Thursday, November 29th, 2007 | | 3:52 pm |
Football
Sporting organisations mean different things to different people, most who do not get involved in the sports from a young age probably do not have any great attachment with sports as they get older. From a young age I was involved in football, either playing it at school or with amateur clubs and I spent a number of years in the St John Ambulance Brigade when I was young, an organisation that donated their services to provide first aid to public events. It was through St Johns that I got to spend a lot of time around football clubs, Melbourne being quite unique in that there were 12 teams at the time from the one city and our national sport grew from the one city. That was when I first got involved and fell in love with my football club, the North Melbourne Football Club. I got to meet a lot of the players, the coaches and people behind the scenes and it was an amazing experience because there is a strong family-like atmosphere with our football clubs, there are a lot of volunteers who work behind the scenes and you get caught up in that. One of the volunteers passed away not long ago, the club meant so much to him and he wanted his funeral service to be held at the club. All the players where there, as was everyone else involved with the club. I think it is moments like that which remind you how much they mean to so many people. The club is currently in a predicament, the sport is expanding rapidly as a national sport and the body which runs the sport wants to move the club up to Queensland, to a high population growth area. Two of the twelve clubs in Melbourne have already moved/merged four new clubs have also been born in different states. There are economic pressure that will probably see more teams move and there is a lot of pressure on my club to move, but it just wont be the same thing. Many of the supporters who don't want to see that fate happen are working to help save the club, working to find a way to secure a long-term future for the club. It wont be easy, not when the club is being offered hundreds of millions to pack up and move. If it moves I just don't think I would have any real attachment to it. The club was founded in 1869 and has rich history and help found the original competition. It would be a significant cultural loss to see the team become a franchise club on the other side of the country. | | Saturday, November 24th, 2007 | | 11:32 pm |
Ding dong, the witch is dead!
John Howard and his Gestapo government of lies and misinformation has been defeated by the Australian Labour Party in a massive landslide. It wasn't just an embarrassing defeat for his party, the country put the sword to the man that manipulated a nation by voting him out of his seat which effectively ends his political career. Never before has this country ousted a government during an economic boom period, I don't recall us ever changing government during a period of war or external strife. Australia will now sign the Kyoto agreement and while we will work with other countries we won't be the rubber stamp to the foreign policy of other nations like the previous administration was. At last we can go into the future, rather than living in the past. The magnitude of this victory is just unbelievable, I never dreamed that enough people would wake up and stop living in this nightmare of fear and hate as the previous government wanted us to. At last, there is light at the end of the tunnel. | | Friday, January 26th, 2007 | | 9:03 am |
New Notebook
I got a new notebook, an Asus F3JV. It is pretty cool, even has enough grunt to play games on it. I had issues with it locking up but it was due to the new memory they had put in, I got them to change it yesterday and it is rock solid now. This notebook has an intel T7200 2ghz processor, 2gb ram, 15.4" widescreen WSGA+ screen (1680x1050) and a Geforce Go 7600 with 512mb ram (256mb on card, can share up to another 256mb). It gets about 40-45fps on WoW at that widescreen resolution with everything set on max so that is pretty good. Runs all my business applications like a dream, pretty happy with it. Cost $2257, about $1700 US. | | Saturday, January 13th, 2007 | | 10:56 pm |
Repent!
I was dragged kicking and screaming to my nephew and niece's christening today. In the end I didn't want to have to deal with more family hate after I ditched my cousin's christening party in December. Normally I don't mind going but this christening was a bit of a farce, the only reason they were going through with it was so that they could get into private catholic school. My nephew is 10 years old and his sister is 7 so they kinda missed the boat a long time ago for my care factor. I brightened up my morning by convincing my nephew that the priest was going to hold his head under water for five minutes and he should practice holding his breath for that long. He wanted his sister to go first. I'm evil, I just can't help it. It was a quiet ceremony, just the priest and mostly immediate family. Someone told my nephew he wouldn't be needing oxygen, party poopers. The highlight of the day was when the priest ask them if they had renounced Satan then my brother's two year old and my other sister's three year old shouted, "No!". I was pissing myself laughing, everyone else was trying to keep from laughing and were giving me dirty looks. Man, what a classic. I am glad I didn't miss it. Kids chose Satan over a Catholic Priest, I'd probably do the same! :P | | Monday, January 1st, 2007 | | 12:17 am |
Insanity
David Hicks, an Australian citizen captured in Afghanistan by a Northern Alliance Warlord and sold to the US Special Forces for $1000 during the invasion of Afghanistan has been held in Guantanamo Bay since December 2001 without charge, tortured constantly, sexually assaulted, denied conditions required by law under the Geneva Convention, left in a cell the size of a cupboard for months at a time. 5 FUCKING YEARS! We are not talking about your typical prison. At least the Chinese are humane enough to just shoot you in the head and put you out of your misery, you have to be a monster to torture someone year after year. I don't care if he is guilty of anything, you do not treat people like that. You do not treat citizens of your Allies like that. If he has done something wrong, put him in a court of law and get it over and done with. America is burning bridges of trust in the international community it will not easily mend. How have we let something like this happen in this day and age is an embarassment. How did we let this happen? It is just insane, it has to end. Those guilty of crimes against humanity must pay, not just the dumb grunts carrying out the orders, but right from the top. Not just in the USA but our moronic puppet in Howard needs to swing by the neck along with them. Current Mood:  angry | | Sunday, December 31st, 2006 | | 8:44 pm |
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