October 2016

Bathurst should be THIS week, the NRL stole the long weekend and should give it back.

After a lot of pant-wetting earlier in the week about windmills, the same boneheads seem very quiet on the problems dams cause. They love dams.

F1 is a joke, another example. Only two cars in the field have a real chance of winning. If those blow up, somebody else gets a look in. Has nothing to do with the skill of any of the drivers, Ricciardo embarrassed Vettel when they shared the same car. Alonso and Ricciardo are as quick as Hamilton, but don't have the car. Bring on the V8s, they understand how to run a car race. Apologies to those who couldn't care less about F1. That's me too, lots of days ;)

I post this every year or so, in case it helps somebody. Chlorine in water is absolutely vital, for public supplies, to keep nasties out of the water. Today they tend to use chloramine, a longer-lasting form of chlorine which makes sure it gets to your tap without nasties. Unfortunately chlorine/chloramine is also a bit of a biological poison, it's why if you buy fish for an aquarium they'll die very quickly if you don't pre-treat the water. And it stinks. There's some evidence it kills healthy bacteria in your gut by drinking it, and also on your skin by washing in it. So how to get the best of both worlds - no nasties in the water and no chlorine/chloramine in and on you? It's cheap and easy. Use vitamin C. A single tablet of it will completely de-chlorinate enough drinking water for a family for days. Buy a 10-litre or bigger dispenser and grind up a vitamin c tablet, adding it to the water when you refill. The water tastes beautiful too. This is the method many municipal authorities now advocate too, and aquarium owners have been doing it for ages too to keep their fish alive. And the practice of adding lemon or other citrus to water before drinking was probably onto something, although that can make the water pretty acidic. You can also get shower heads which contain vitamin c and de-chlorinate as you shower. Am trying one of these now, seems to work really well, and I don't get the chlorine stink or itchy eyes that we used to etc. Not sure if there's sufficient time for the vitamin C and chloramine to react within the shower head, but the reaction is known to be very quick chemically, and there's a noticeable difference for me.

The numbers are staggering, it's actually $12 billion a year now. Worth remembering next time somebody wants to talk about leaners.

Watching bank CEOs being interviewed here in Oz brings to mind Wells Fargo. One of the biggest banks in America. In an attempt to improve their numbers they ordered employees to open millions of fake accounts for actual customers. The response of the bank management when this was exposed? Sack 5300 staff, for being dishonest. Not one senior executive was sacked or lost one penny of their enormous bonuses. Now the regulators are into them, as they should be here. All financial crises involve banks. Always, in history. They crippled the Oz economy in the 1980s and we haven't learned a single bloody thing. Arseholes.

Probably is true that FB isn't using real-life editors for its newsfeed.

$152 trillion is a lot of money - that's the world debt. But...two-thirds of this is private debt. That's the big story about debt and always has been, politicians who make out debt is a government problem (the ones who say we "live beyond our means") have another agenda, which is just to smash governments. Often they have a vested interest, good friends in the banking industry for example. Banks and private industry, particularly the financial sector, are responsible for the overwhelming majority of the world's debt.

I love that the panda which falls from the tree carries on as if nothing has happened.

Happy birthday Den!

Just add some extra lanes when you get more traffic, what can go wrong? :)

It's one of the great triumphs of certain politicians, and their sponsors, that so many of us are convinced these are terrible times to live in. This is the best time to be alive in human history.

I'm getting one of these for @[725606566:2048:Kell Drengenberg].

This is often voted the greatest rock performance in history. Only 20 mins long but they took the stage and literally blew the other biggest names in the world off the stage. Mostly Freddie, nobody before or since could command a crowd like this, and with a billion people watching only the really special can lift it another gear like this. There isn't another performer I can think of who could have held that stadium in their hands in this way. And it should be said, this isn't even one of the really top Queen performances. Lots of people who didn't know much about Queen said they were shocked they were this good. People who knew of the band weren't surprised at all, they had been embarrassing all the other top acts in the world for years before this already.

I'm guessing the steel and auto workers who've lost their jobs and want to vote Trump will find this compelling. *facepalm*

Racism can be very subtle. And this from the Guardian, who should know better.

The real reason there are votes for people like Trump.

So Dave Nell Thompson, I realised today that Dave, Daniel Craig and me are all the same age. We could list similarities all day I'm sure.

Yep. Some modern engines get to 25-30%. Still really hopeless, scandalous really. And filthy and noisy to boot.

HSC time again, this time each year we tell our kids that it doesn't matter if they don't do well, it's just a number and a small part of their life etc. All true, but maybe one of the reasons kids are less resilient now is because we do this sort of thing. The HSC is just one of many challenges in life, and do we want them to approach those challenges all in the same 'doesn't really matter' way? It does matter. Doesn't mean people should wet their pants over it with worry, but the message kids should be getting is give it a red hot go - challenge yourself. If you don't succeed there will be other options, but challenge yourself. Work hard, go outside your comfort zone a little.

If you have a brother or brothers, this one is for you girls :) http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/life-and-relationships/parenting/why-you-should-give-your-sons-more-chores-than-your-daughters-20161011-gs0576.html

To the furniture movers in my life.

@[783412914:2048:Kyle Manning] , @[1222290127:2048:Tobias Drengenberg] and @[606028898:2048:Jason Ian Green], this goes to the discussions around whether Trump supporters are just dumb, racist bigots. And why thinking that is such a disaster to understanding what's really going on. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/13/liberal-media-bias-working-class-americans?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

David Hockney refers to the Ghent Altarpiece in his brilliant book on the possibly big use of lenses, mirrors and other optical technology by important painters, including Caravaggio. The Altarpiece is important says Hockney because it shows how much linear perspective has come to dominate how we think about images and space - this painting uses an entirely different type of perspective. Some simpletons have said it's a type of primitive perspective, but as Hockney says it's immensely sophisticated, giving the viewer the sense that everything in the painting is right at the front, so that there is a presence to every important element.

Sometimes ads throw up something very interesting.

With apologies to Scott Tully, who occupies that 1%!

Goldie is always a voice of sanity in a debate dominated by idiot shock jocks. There are two groups in Australia that dominate spending on welfare. The aged, through the pension. And the rich, through tax concessions. The fact that those who end up in the firing line for living a 'welfare mentality' are people like single mums and the unemployed just tells you that these vicious mongrels hate the poor, nothing else.

Why aren't more LGBTI folk annoyed at always being called a 'community'?

It's always been easy to make working class violence look terrible. Naughty words, threats of violence etc. Dress the guy in a suit and let him screw thousands of people out of their life savings or homes, and he might just be called a businessman. Where's Rumpole when you need him.

If you see a person walking down the street talking to themselves, you probably think they look a bit mad. But it's funny, maybe the only difference between them and you is that they're talking to themselves out loud.

Nicely done.

Happy birthday fellow bald one.

Picassos's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust". Sold for $106.5 million in 2010. Property developers and their spokesman Scott Morrison explain that this is a 'supply' problem, there aren't enough Picassos available for sale.

Fassbender is an interesting man.

Yeh, um. No.

One for a Monday. Smile everybody. Simple, and more powerful than it seems.

Happy birthday coach!

Dads are geniuses.

I don't think it's really registered yet for many how serious this is. Except the commentators on Sky, who were celebrating it last night. Was like watching monkeys eat their own shit at the zoo. http://theaimn.com/gleeson-affair-significant-dismissal-perhaps/

It'd be easy to mock this. But somehow it seems a very important thing, about the nature of the body and sacredness. Have never been sure about cremation.

Happy birthday! Keep on smiling.

Have always loved the contrast between this reaction, and the one about a year later when nobody has slept in about 3 weeks ;)

Trump is not what he seems. Too much focus on him and not on why he's popular.

It doesn't matter how often this is shown to be wrong, always the same welfare bludger rubbish. Outright lies, picking on the worst off in the community while the best off have their snouts in the public trough. Disgusting.

Hats off to Lithgow Buslines for the decoration job this morning. There was even a big bowl of lollies, which unfortunately nobody noticed until we were getting off.