If you don’t understand this, then you SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO VOTE!
Source: Chickennation.com
Tag: Australia
Common Decency
Proof – if any were needed – that acting legally and acting decently are not necessarily the same thing.
Proof also – if any were needed – that being a minister of religion is no guarantee of being a decent human being.
Meanwhile, at Adobe…
Maybe if I say ‘Creative Cloud’ enough people will stop asking me these awkward pricing questions…
Oh America!
Apparently there’s some American woman who wants to move to Australia because…
“…their president is a Christian and actually supports what he says…”
Hmmm, let’s do a comparison…
| Julia Gillard Prime Minister of Australia |
Barack Obama President of the United States of America |
|
|---|---|---|
| President? | No | Yes |
| Christian? | No – A stated Atheist | Yes – Despite right wingers’ repeated claims that he’s a filthy, evil, communist, socialist, terrorist, Kenyan “Muslin” |
| He? | No | Yes |
| Actually supports what he says? | No* | No* |
| Score | 0/4 | 3/4 |
When it’s put like that, I rather think she’d be happier staying where she is.
(* Find me a politician who does and I’ll give you a shiny new donkey – or if you prefer, elephant)
Do as History Teaches
It’s that time again, the time when the Australian swim team goes off to the Olympics and – to the general consternation of the nation – totally fails to dominate. Our swimmers pick up some silvers, some bronzes and maybe a few golds, and the press fills up with questions about where it’s all gone so wrong.
The thing that everyone fails to remember is that this is the Olympic Games, not the Commonwealth Games. In the Commonwealth Games we slaughter everyone, because, frankly, we’re the only people in the Commonwealth who can actually swim. At the Olympics we face the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and a horde of upstart, wildcard nations that luck out by stumbling over a single brilliant swimmer. Faced with all that competition we actually punch well above our weight, but there’s still hand wringing and gnashing of teeth every time we win a silver (or, the horror! a bronze) rather than a gold.
To those who are upset at our team’s performance in the pool – or elsewhere – I say shut up and listen to some TISM.
Sightings
I saw a UFO this morning.
At this point people are probably going “Oh god! Don’t tell me he believes in UFOs! He’s insane! I’m never reading this blog again!”. To which I say “Of course I believe in UFOs! I’ve seen a number of them over the years, I’d be mad to not believe in them!”
The point of course is that when you say “UFO” you probably mean “alien spaceship”, and when I say “UFO” I mean exactly what it says on the box – an Unidentified Flying Object.
Now I suppose it’s possible that any given UFO could be an alien spaceship, but – as a person with a decent grasp of both interstellar distances and physics – I wouldn’t be holding my breath. While I’m of the opinion that some UFOs may turn out to be anomalous – which is to say they are examples of a phenomena currently uncategorised by science – common sense dictates that the vast, vast majority of sightings are perfectly ordinary objects (such as aircraft, birds, stars, clouds, planets, meteors, etc.) seen from funny angles or under unusual conditions. I’m sure for instance that what I saw this morning was a plane either taking off from or circling to land at Perth Airport, which is only five or so kilometres from the site of my observation, Bayswater Railway Station.
What I saw at 8:33 this morning was a shining, slightly ovoid disc traveling from right to left across the east-north-eastern sky for between 30 seconds and a minute. It kept level at about four fingers above the treeline, and covered a distance of about four fingers before passing behind a cloud and vanishing. A mass of thin, whispy dark cloud was blowing across the sky from left to right, and the object was passing behind it, occasionally vanishing behind pillars of cloud – I was careful to note that the object was moving relative to the ground, not just to the cloud. Its level of brightness varied up and down, but remained constant for the last ten seconds of observation.
There were a large number of people on the platform at the time, but no-one else seemed to notice the object – or if they did they just assumed it was a plane. Which it almost certainly was. I considered taking a photo, but really couldn’t be bothered 🙂
So there we are. UFOs buzzing Bayswater. Tune in next week when I tell you about the thylacine I saw down by the river!
(Note: I have never actually seen a thylacine down by the river or indeed anywhere else :))
Moit!
One of my guilty pleasures at the moment is the new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures on ABC 3. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s fun – and hey, I already classified it as a guilty pleasure, which means I don’t have to justify it to anyone, let alone you.
😉
There was one annoying thing about the episodes they played last night though. The presence of an “Ossy” (which is how Americans strangely insist on pronouncing “Aussie”).
Now I have no strange objection to Australians appearing in American TV shows. It’s nice to see us represented. But what would also be nice would be getting actors who can actually do an Australian accent – as opposed to doing a Cockney accent with “moit” added to the end of every second sentence.
Sure, Americans can’t tell the difference, but believe me it makes us cringe. It’s like representing an American accent by getting a Puerto Riccan to randomly say “pard’ner”. Or a Canadian accent by having a South African end every sentence with “eh?”. It’s bizarre.
Of course, it’s not going to change. But it would be nice.
Or perhaps noice moit!
A Black Spot on the Sun
Bloody clouds!!
So, my plans to observe the transit of Venus were stymied by a massive slab of overcast that rolled in over the city just before sunrise. Justin and I had been intending to take my telescope up to Kings Park to watch, but there wasn’t much point – we headed over to Maylands anyway and had breakfast at Milkd.
I ended up alternating between the Mount Wilson and Mauna Kea video feeds, so at least I saw it, if not exactly with my own eyes.
As Justin said, roll on the 2016 transit of Mercury!
Power Down Under
Since we seem to be on a kick of posting songs rather than writing anything, here are some fantastic Australian tracks from the 1980s that you might have forgotten…
The Church – I’m Almost With You
Mondo Rock – Cool World
Mental As Anything – Live it Up
Boom Crash Opera – Dancing in the Storm
The Stupid Country
60% of Australians are idiots
Google has released its 10 most searched for terms in Australia for 2011. At number three is…. “Google”.
While I’d really, really like to attribute that to IT Crowd fans, I think it’s just a clear indication that people, fundamentally, are morons.
The full, shameful list…
1. Facebook
2. YouTube
3. Google
4. Games
5. eBay
6. Hotmail
7. Brisbane
8. Weather
9. News
10. Yahoo
That’s more terrible than stealing 30 cakes.
