Month: April 2009

Posts you might have missed

Too many posts to handle? Here’s a quick list of the posts you might have missed this week:
  • 10 stupid USB Devices
    Posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 in Oddities
    You can put a USB connection on just about anything – even an amputated finger – and there are so many USB devices around that the “universal” is becoming a literal description rather than an indication of ubiquity. Here’s ten USB devices that should never have been made. Let alone sold.And where to buy them. Dance Dance Devolution Air conditioned neck tie The ChatterBot – this one needs describing.WowWee™ Chatterbots are fantastically fun animated computer accessories to have on your desktop.
  • Dead set legend?
    Posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 in Church
    I mentioned the ABC radio’s unique take on the stats released by the Centre for Public Christianity yesterday. Dan has helpfully shared a link to the ABC Radio transcript of the story I was listening to on the world today.The reaction to the statistics has been somewhat amusing. On the one hand 55% of the “non born again” community don’t believe in the resurrection. Which should be comforting to atheists, Muslims and the liberal church.The Uniting Church in New South Wales was one of the first organisations to put its own spin on the findings – claiming most of the 45% of (non “born again”) people who believe in the resurrection only believe it in a metaphorical sense.
  • Feeding the masses
    Posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 in Life
    Wow. Today I have 43 feed subscribers. This number fluctuates pretty dramatically. If you’re not a subscriber then maybe you should be if you don’t have a feed reader – try Google Reader on for size. If you are a feed reader then maybe you should stop by the actual page sometime to see what’s happening in the comments. Anyway, these are largely irrelevant observations tangential to the main purpose of this particular post. I’m trying out FriendFeed today – it’s a social networking aggregator/platform/rival to Facebook or Twitter.
  • Humility 2.0
    Posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 in Church
    I sometimes wonder why some people I respect in real life, and who show all the hallmarks of humility have such arrogant online profiles or personal webpages. I won’t link to them – but as a general rule they’re as good as they say they are. It just seems a little arrogant to claim to be as good as you are – though I was accused recently of being a typical Australian with tall poppy tendencies – so maybe that’s it.
  • Presumed innocent
    Posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 in Culture
    Our legal system is built on the presumption of innocence. Things would be pretty messy if we changed things around – we’d have to lock up everybody facing criminal charges – and then who would handle our baggage at the airport or stimulate the economy by buying motorbikes and parts… It’s a central principle of life in a liberal democracy. And yet it is thrown completely out the window in one social occasion – the transaction that takes place when a man buys flowers from any retailer.
  • Protect and serve?
    Posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 in Coffee
    Discussion is ongoing on yesterday’s post about protectionism and misguided “buy local” campaigns. I didn’t mention the “sustainability” side of that debate – which is probably valid. It doesn’t make sense for major grocery stores to ship produce from North Queensland to warehouses in Victoria then back to North Queensland for sale – at that point I will join the brotherhood of sustainability and cry foul (fowl if we’re talking about chickens…). I didn’t mention it because it’s not the problem I have with “buy local” campaigns – which is that they don’t do what they claim to do, namely “protect local jobs”.
  • Protect us from ourselves
    Posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 in Politics
    I got this email today, from a colleague.”Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock ( MADE IN JAPAN ) for 6am . While his coffeepot ( MADE IN CHINA ) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG ). He put on a dress shirt ( MADE IN SRI LANKA ), designer jeans ( MADE IN SINGAPORE ) and tennis shoes ( MADE IN KOREA ). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet ( MADE IN INDIA ) he sat down with his calculator ( MADE IN MEXICO ) to see how much he could spend today.
  • Protectionism: A guest post
    Posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 in Politics
    I often preface my posts on economics by saying “I’m not an economist” – I also often have discussions with my friend Ben – who is an economist – and based on his uni results and work history, a good one, before posting things. Today, rather than rehashing his comments on protectionism and the economics involved I’ll just reproduce them verbatim. _______________________________________Okay, you have a bunch of people working in for an Australian company in Australia.
  • Segway 2.0
    Posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 in Oddities
    What do you get when you cross a Segway with a smart car? A Puma apparently. The world has gone bonkers over this new announcement – and given my previous fixation with the gyroscopic transporter I couldn’t let this slide…Here it is in action. It’s like a golf buggy. Only crapper. If you’re reading this in the sidebar you may have to click the link through to the post for the video.
  • Shirt of the Day: Camera phone
    Posted on Thursday, April 9th, 2009 in Oddities
    It’s nice when online T-Shirt vendors like SnorgTees keep up with modern pop culture references – like Flight of the Conchords songs.Also cool, and also from SnorgTees is this ninja shirt.
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April 13, 2009

A bunch of links – April 12, 2009

April 12, 2009

Colbert v Biblical contradictions

Stephen Colbert is a most fantastic interviewer – if you want the interviewee to feel particularly awkward. On Thursday he took on Bert Ehrman – who is pushing a new book about contradictions in the bible…

Colbert, a practicing Catholic, rips him apart. A bit. It’s interesting viewing.

April 12, 2009

A bunch of links – April 11, 2009

April 11, 2009

Commitment

John Safran had himself nailed to a cross yesterday. Apparently.

The man is nothing if not committed to his quest to understand religions of all colours (and creeds).

Father Bob – his radio offsider on JJJ – described it as an attempt to understand religion at a forensic level…

“For him, religion is the heart of the cosmos.

“If he did do it, it would have been for a forensic investigation of religious practices.”

An AFP report from Manila said the Australian, who was half-naked and wearing a long-haired wig with an improvised crown of thorns, joined Filipinos in a procession carrying a huge wooden cross to a crucifixion site.

He could be heard moaning loudly as the nails were driven into his palms and as his cross was hoisted up, allowing him to hang for about five minutes.

When he was taken down, he was rushed by men dressed as centurions to a medical tent for treatment. “

April 11, 2009

Get in the game

With these wall stickers priced at $74.99 you’ll be racing around the house picking up all the lose change as quickly as you can. Just don’t bash your head against bricks or lights in the process – and make sure flowers aren’t poisonous before ingesting.

April 11, 2009

Please take one

Celebrating ads in bus shelters is easy – but what about ads that people put up illegally on walls and legally on notice boards? The tear off ad is time honoured, and tried and true.

Here are two that I like.

From Flickr.

Free paper.

April 11, 2009

The Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World – Appendix

Appendix A – World Map
map

Appendix B – List of insignificant countries (or landmasses)

  • Tasmania
  • New Zealand
  • Micronesia
  • American Samoa
  • Fiji
  • Alaska
  • Siberia
  • Greenland
  • Poland
  • Victoria
  • Timor
  • Switzerland
  • Texas
  • Alabama
  • Wales
  • France
  • Ecuador
  • Equatorial Guinea
  • Nauru
  • Christmas Islands
  • Norfolk Island
  • Ireland
  • Scotland
  • England
  • Norway
  • Sweden
  • Finland
  • Democratic Republic of Congo

April 11, 2009

A bunch of links – April 10, 2009

April 10, 2009

Flying saucer…

A hard squeeze on that trigger and you’ll have sauce flying all over the room, it’ll make home movies featuring tomato sauce fueled bloodbaths easier to produce – taking out one of the editing steps between gun shot and gaping wound.

Speaks for itself really. Particularly if you harness its awesome powers to write words with your sauce.

April 10, 2009

Penned up agression

One of the lesser known perks of my job is the number of promotional pens I receive – I’m not at med student levels – but I certainly receive enough to keep me jotting down notes all year round.

Or at least I would, if people weren’t always stealing them from my desk. It’s enough to give one a dash of pen rage. This set will stop them… They’re designed by World Wide Fred – and available from Perpetual Kid.

April 10, 2009

Mmm, bacn

Some clever little cookie decided that “spam” was a label too ubiquitous to be applied to all junk email, and so bacn was born. It’s like bacon and is a lunchmeat enthused pun. Of sorts. It’s a catchall label used to describe solicited advertisements, newsletters and well targetted email campaigns.

Microsoft this week announced that something like 97% of all email traffic is spam. They don’t make the bacn distinction as far as I’m aware. But I do. So I’m choosing to allow spam comments that fit into the bacn category – like two shirt sites that commented on my last post about SnorgTees – that’s nice. It shows initiative. And NerdyShirts even offered a 10% discount.

You could buy this topical masterpiece…

Or an Eastery theme – this one’s called “The Last Supper“…

Rizzo Tees offered no discount – but proferred a link to their site claiming Snorg was an “inspiration”… here are some of their shirts. Starting with one particularly on topic…

Spam

Blogburner:

I can relate. I lost 20 subscribers yesterday. Gone. Who knows where… not that I’m checking.

And a ninja shirt….

And one about coffee for good measure (provided you get the size right…boom boom…)

See… not only will a well placed and relevant spam comment get noticed – it’ll earn you a post in these parts.

April 10, 2009

The Beginners Guide to Taking Over the World – When Things Go Wrong

When things go wrong

Responding to a crisis as a leader is a three-step process. You need to blame shift, punish and move on, and you need to do it fast. As a ruler you need to maintain the appearance of infallibility. To do this you always need to have a scapegoat handy, preferably a willing, dedicated scapegoat, preferably a goat. Appoint a goat as your undersecretary and whenever anything goes wrong you can have a ritual goat sacrifice, hire a new goat and get back to the business of running your empire. It’s always a good idea to hire a mute goat, you don’t want them bleating out all your secrets in a bid to get their head off the chopping block. That way forging written confessions is easy. The goat can’t verify anything, and you’re in the clear.

If crises are occurring too regularly it may be that you aren’t delegating enough, be prepared to let go of a little control, it will make blame shifting easier in the long run, and if an underling makes a grab for too much power you can easily crush them using the blame shift, punish and move on method.

What now?

So, you’ve conquered all, you’re at the pinnacle of human civilisation. You’ve erected statues to honour your achievements. You’ve named cities after yourself. Rock stars make an effort to perform at your charity bashes, for free. What do you do now? It’s like buying a birthday present for a man who has everything, you spend ages agonising about what to get him and then you capitulate and buy him something that he’s already got lots of, like hankies. When it comes to taking over the world your options are much the same, you can, if the thought grabs you, try to take over other planets, stake your claim there, try to be the human master of the universe. Or you can give in to the one great truth. Everyone, sooner or later, dies. So spend the rest of your life trying to come to terms with that. No matter how much you achieve your going to die, and you can’t take it with you. Now if you’re anything like Attila the Hun, you’re going to want to eat your children because they sure don’t deserve your empire, but lets face it, no one deserves your empire. My advice is, write a book about how you managed to achieve what you achieved, sell everything and go and live in a cave somewhere as a hermit. Or try to return to normal life in normal society and when people come running up to you for autographs be polite and sign them, it doesn’t take too much effort, and who knows, maybe one day they’ll be the ruler of the world and you’ll need a favour.

April 10, 2009

Presumed innocent

Our legal system is built on the presumption of innocence. Things would be pretty messy if we changed things around – we’d have to lock up everybody facing criminal charges – and then who would handle our baggage at the airport or stimulate the economy by buying motorbikes and parts… It’s a central principle of life in a liberal democracy. And yet it is thrown completely out the window in one social occasion – the transaction that takes place when a man buys flowers from any retailer. There’s the same awkward banter between said male and the (generally) female store clerk… Every time. Or at least every time I buy flowers. Maybe I just look guilty. It’s always a variation of this theme:

Salesperson: “So, what have you done wrong?”

As though I would only be buying flowers to atone for wrongdoings. As though a $14 bunch of colourful flora is an appropriate act to win my redemption. It’s presumed guilt. Perhaps I just want points in the bank in case I do something wrong in the future, or maybe my motives are completely altruistic. This response is prejudice at its most banal – and up with this I shall not put. Not any more.

April 9, 2009

A bunch of links – April 9, 2009

April 9, 2009