June 2017

I'm sure my kids made this meme.

Right. Where do I buy a snow machine?

This could all change if we keep electing people determined to outsource government services to the private sector. Don't think it can happen? Just look at schools people, look at schools.

I'm not sure people fully realise the dangers here.

Wow, the big 5-0 Goodie! Have a huge one

Happy birthday ! Saw your post about marking, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree :)

The most interesting thing to observe in fashions is when you hit that tipping point, where the thing everybody wanted and assumed was a no-brainer flips into its opposite. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/interiors/home/open-plan-living-is-over---bring-back-the-closed-kitchen/#

We need cool heads to prevail. TVs seem to be the greatest risk. Some numbers for America: - you are 35000 times more likely to die of heart disease than from terrorism - you are 34000 times more likely to die of cancer than from terrorism - you are 20,000 times more likely to die of obesity than from terrorism - you are 6000 times more likely to die from medical error than from terrorism - you're 5000 times more likely to die from use of alcohol than from terrorism - you are 2000 times more likely to die of a car crash than from terrorism - you're 2000 times more likely to die from suicide than from terrorism - you're 500 times more likely to die of a sexually transmitted illness than from terrorism - you are 270 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than from terrorism - you are 200 times more likely to starve to death than to die from terrorism - you are 22 times more likely to die of a parasitic infection than from terrorism - you are 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist - you are 4 times more likely to be struck by lightning than you are to be killed by a terrorist - you're equally as likely to die from your TV falling on you as you are to be killed by a terrorist.

Whaddya think?

This is Marissa Mayer, previous CEO of Yahoo. She made over a million dollars *per week* (yes, you read that right, per week) as CEO. And not to single just her out, it's only one example, there's an entire culture of disgusting excess in the corporate world, across the world. So next time you hear dole bludgers copping it, think of Marissa. If you want to mount an argument that she 'earned' that money, please do it with somebody else who doesn't have a brain, I won't have the patience for it.

Lots of different types of body disorders, being ripped is a less known one. Have been a bit surprised how many people that I know are using supplements of some kind to build muscle.

It's not a fake news, fact-free world. It was never a 'fact' world in the first place.

Let's get serious about naming the real terrorists among us.

I do actually love wine and beer, although I rarely have any these days. But we as a society have a lot more trouble with alcohol than we do with terrorists, for example. And another take down of the 'moderation' myth (not that drinking 'in moderation' is bad, but that it's an empty, meaningless phrase).

Our atmosphere is amazing. Most of the rubbish that would otherwise hit us burns up in the atmosphere, and spacecraft also famously need heat shields to prevent them burning up too. A really interesting question is - what causes the heat?

Andrew Bolt's attack. Homer the Vigilante. I doubt Bolt has the brains to see the similarities. "Kent Brockman: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent? Homer Simpson: Aw, you can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forfty percent of all people know that. Kent Brockman: I see. Well, what do you say to the accusation that your group has been causing more crimes than it's been preventing? Homer Simpson: Oh, Kent, I'd be lying if I said my men weren't committing crimes. Kent Brockman: [pause] Well, touché." http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/andrew-bolt-fights-back-after-masked-men-spray-him-with-liquid/news-story/2305dbca91e6468928346d5bdf7b0d06

Continuing the science theme, what causes the seasons? There are interesting versions of this one.

Remember when the Greenland ice sheet was white? Me too.

This is how the Earth got its tilt. Early in its history something about the size of Mars crashed into us, breaking off a huge amount of rock and rubble. That rubble and gravity together then formed the moon, and the collision tipped the Earth off its axis. The moon today keeps that tilt in place. That tilt is probably the reason we're here. Without it there would be no seasons. Without seasons it's likely the climate would be in bands that get progressively colder as you moved from the equator towards the poles, and winter would be permanent there. The only habitable bit would be around that equator, but it would have continuous rainfall and leach any nutrients from the soil, making it almost impossible to grow any food. This climate would also be perfect for disease organisms, even worse than the tropics today. Just because I think this stuff is bloody interesting.

So UK people - time to move to compulsory voting? Amazing really that countries can have compulsory seat belts, but not compulsory civic responsibility. Anybody who tells you it's about freedom of choice - smash their nose in with a hammer, and say it was you exercising your freedom of choice.

Ever wondered why a flight you've taken seems to be quite a bit shorter than what is advertised? It's a deliberate strategy employed by airlines, called 'schedule buffering', where they list the flight time as 20-30% longer than it should actually take, so that their on-time numbers come back looking good.

May be an anger management issue here...

Amazing, seeing 100 million years into the past.

Another aspect of the word we've been living in for the last couple of decades - the world of sentimentality, of extreme emotions, and of debt-fueled social comparison - is brands. Brands are the way people differentiate themselves in this world. In a pattern that repeats all through history, the rich are differentiating themselves by avoiding big brand names that they originally supported, while everybody else is using them as markers of social status (the poorer person's status substitute - whom the rich see as vulgar). Fascinating and also disturbing, I love and am scared by this quote from a brand obsessive, at the same time. "I suffer from a recurring compulsion towards the labels on consumer goods. If you and I met in the street, I would automatically scan the logos on you and, based on their status, judge the type of person that you were. I once fell in love at first sight on a crowded bus travelling into work. She had huge dark eyes, the most delicate lips and rich, thick hair - pretty much the girl of my dreams. I couldn't help but stare at her during the half-hour journey, wondering if I should get up and ask her for a date. I had plucked up just enough courage to ask her when the bus pulled over and the deck cleared, leaving the woman in full view. She was wearing Pumas - to me, the all-time most rubbish sneaker money can buy. In my view, it's a brand that says you'd like to be cool, you'd like to be adventurous, but you've neither the confidence nor the flair to see it through. The woman's spell-binding beauty evaporated. I couldn't even look at her any more."

Germaine Greer was one of the only prominent boomers who saw through the emptiness of the 60s 'peace and love' movement. This looks a miserable quote, but it's not at all, and matches what Proust for example saw about love - that it's so often a projection onto another person of yourself. There is a real love, but it's easily lost in the sentimentality view of human relationships. The other aspect of the emptiness of the hippification of the world was how it masked the dismantling of centuries-old human institutions, the big anti-establishment push. These same boomers went on to become the richest generation in human history, by a country mile, largely by cashing in on the breakdown of existing institutions for which they offered cash-generating alternatives. And they let institutions such as school, church, public transport and public services, wither to the point that today the cost of providing even basics in these areas has become almost impossible to meet. In stark contrast to the rhetoric of their youth, leaving the next generations substantially poorer, with enormous social problems to solve. Most of the mess we think the world is in today had its origins in that smashing of human institutions. All in the name of 'peace and love'.

Barcelona is still fighting the great tourism cancer.

Another service the atmosphere does for us is moderate temperatures. Astronauts working with objects in orbit need to be extremely careful, a piece of metal for example can get to about 260 degrees C in the sun and minus 100 degrees C in the shade.

@[725606566:2048:Kell Drengenberg]@[1240225973:2048:Dave Nell Thompson]@[1103698174:2048:Lydia Commins]@[738682522:2048:Nicole Stevenson]@[842097356:2048:Cameron Stevenson]

More glories of travel and tourism! Bologna, Venice and Florence are doing the same.

Didn't know that Columbus never actually made it to mainland America. He landed in the Caribbean.

Oooh baby. https://www.telstra.com.au/thanks/music/queen

Can somebody explain why garbage trucks and street sweeper trucks do their rounds so early in the morning, waking whole towns? I can see a possible logic in a big city, to avoid traffic at least on major roads. But apart from that, it doesn't make sense to me.

There's no end to the truth of this one, it just keeps on giving. But we're so often obsessed by wanting things to be different to how they actually are, we're fantasists at heart.

I doubt many will pay much attention to this, but if you have your government openly attacking your judges, you're on your way to living in the sort of country refugees run away from. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/ministers-to-be-hauled-before-supreme-court-after-criticising-terror-sentencing-20170614-gwr6t0.html

Happy Birthday Bruce, may your day be open and up!

Very useful if you've been dudded by a retailer: https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/complaints-problems/write-a-complaint-letter/complaint-letter-tool

Heh, "Employment in the Australian supermarket and grocery industry went down for the first time in 2015-16 and is projected to remain flat for a few years. But staff numbers are projected to rebound again, in part due to the need to curtail growing theft in self-checkouts."

Air conditioning was once something to put up in lights.

Sometimes it feels good to pointlessly rail against being gouged.

"It is one of the great paradoxes of solitude, that it offers us not an escape, not a paradise, not a dwelling place where we can haughtily maintain our integrity by ignoring a vicious and corrupt social world, but a way back to that world, and a new motive for being there." John Burnside

Saw this a few years ago. Could save a life.

Another way to understand the separation of powers is that it puts a wall between idiots, and the rest of us. Imagine having Hinch come to your aid, it'd be like Rolf Harris giving you a reference to be a Girl Guide leader. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/turnbull-ministers-silent-as-hinch-backs-trios-court-attack-20170618-gwtcmm.html

Death duties are a very controversial subject. But the morality of the topic is hard to argue with.

Another example of how property, gambling and booze run NSW. If you sell somebody a fridge and it's a lemon, you have responsibilities to make it right. But for a house, which is the biggest purchase most people make, you're pretty much on your own. Buyer beware etc.

Imagine this. You set up a TV show where people take cars/fridges/furniture/dishwashers, do a few hundred dollars worth of repairs to them and then sell them for up to thousands more than the original price. Consumer protection would have it shut down within days. Do it with property though, where you spend a few thousand dollars on a reno and then sell the house on for up to *hundreds* of thousands of dollars more than the original price, and you have about 4 shows on TV right now. This is why the economy will crash.

"Sources who attended the meeting said some parents, concerned about massive fee rises, were in tears and said they would have to send their children to a public school if the changes passed." O the humanity.

Inequality in history has always been 'fixed' by plagues and wars. (Inequality played a big role in creating those plagues and wars at the same time.) Are we smart enough to avoid more wars and plagues (including climate change) by attacking inequality? Or will it need to be more wars and plagues doing the work? Are we too individually smart but collectively stupid?

The right answers need the right questions.

Kaboom! :) Only smiling because what else can you do? If it blows, the banks will be protected, you won't, they'll happily sell your house from under you. They cause it, our money then bails them out of it. How's that for justice?

Solitude and silence. So, so rare, and we're so habituated to noise and distractions that it can seem a form of torture to lots of us to have to be alone, and do nothing, and have silence. But if you can't be happy in that situation, you will never be really happy anywhere.

Is "born and bred" backwards?

Ho hum. The worm keeps turning. The article is a good one in that it understands that there is nothing different between everyday tourists and 'authentic' tourism - it's the authentic tourism that opens up new spots for all tourism. Two sides of one coin. "In fact, "travellers" are a major part of the issue. They want to get off the beaten track, they want to see the "real" city – but in doing so they're breaking down the traditional tourist/local barriers, they're popping up in quiet neighbourhoods, invading locals-only havens in the name of seeing something authentic. At least the tourist crowd just congregates in one spot and can easily be avoided."

Not going to be popular, but nails it. (Separate post @[783412914:2048:Kyle Manning] so as not to confuse some separate issues. I taught a lot of kids who are still living their 'gap year' 20 years later. Another dimension of this issue, the author is spot on that to create you need to stay still and knuckle down at things.)

"We care too much what others think. Experts say that oversharing is fueled by our insecurities, the need to compensate for deficits, socially or professionally that we perceive in ourselves. We worry about what others think, try desperately to make ourselves look good, giving away far more information than we should."

Has anybody seen Courteney's face? She wants it back.

Kids with autism should be mainstreamed. They probably should get a lot more support than they currently do IN that mainstream now though. Mainstreaming in the past has often been a cost-cutting measure too, removing expensive specialised support. It would be good to be able to isolate morons in parliament into their own special learning groups. There are more than a few who are specially challenged there at the moment, who lack some basic education in multiple areas.

All freedom comes from habit. From routine. Many fight habits, but (by far) it's much harder to make a habit than break one. Humans have individual habits, but also human institutions are habits, collective habits. This is an iconoclastic time, where the passion is to always have the new, to break the habits of the old. But we don't replace those habits with new habits, and then wonder why we feel constantly busy and exhausted and anxious. True freedom and peace in life comes from the patient building of habits.

First home buyer schemes do nothing to help first home buyers. They just make sellers and agents richer, and are designed to be like an electrode inserted in the anus of the disaster of Australian Housing, to keep the corpse twitching just that little bit longer.

Photography can make you think that what is 'real' is what has more detail. Ever noticed how almost impossible it is to get a truly 'real' photograph of a sunset? Look at this photo, and this painting - which one gives you more of a feeling of a sunset?

The only genius thing I've ever seen done with a treadmill.

"If my breath can stay steady and smooth, that’s a clue that I’m not asking more from my body than what it can give.” (Amy Matthews) The most important piece of exercise advice I've ever seen.

Politics won't improve until we really want to understand how somebody can remove health care from the poor, to fund tax cuts for the rich, and the poor line up to vote for them.

The distinction between natural and artificial isn't real.

And sign-thieves, obviously.

"All government — indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act — is founded on compromise and barter." Edmund Burke

"A bass player at a large symphony orchestra recently told me that fellow musicians refer to a common programming ploy – a contemporary work played between two popular classical compositions – as a ‘shit sandwich’." Judith Dobrzynski, reflecting on why we can't seem to like the world we actually live in, preferring the past or imagined futures.

The final conclusion to this article is right. So long as we the public agree to pay the ridiculous prices, they'll keep charging them. I won't pay, it disgusts me.

Do you ever hear teachers tell kids they have to do 'real research', and not just Google answers? That's maybe bad advice, for a couple of reasons: 1) Google is how 'serious' researchers do a shedload of their own research; and 2) Google works by aggregating the searching of thousands of people, and aggregating their decisions as to what is useful and what isn't. It's therefore HUGELY more likely to give you reliable information than looking through some references yourself. Wikipedia is similar. Students are often told to avoid it, but as a resource it's easily as good as any formal reference you will find, and possibly better. It will also have a much, much bigger range of topics than other reference sources.

It's not Left versus Right. It's Top versus Bottom.

Here's a good essay topic. "Play School is moving from 9.30 am to 9 am. Explain why this is a really dumb idea."

I don't often post personal things to FB, but this one made me nostalgic. This is my twin (Michael Drengenberg) and I meeting an elephant in 1973 (we're the ones with the crosses drawn underneath us on the pic). And it's weird that I actually remember it! And I remember having all that blonde hair too.

We tend to think of kids as adults-to-be, as if we adults shape the world and then kids grow up and start shaping it too. But to me kids start shaping the world in all sorts of ways we hardly notice, while they're still kids. For example: - how many of your current circle of friends did you meet because they're somehow connected with your kids, like parents of their friends or parents of kids in a sporting team? Kids play a huge role in shaping our adult social lives - it's known that most changes in the language we speak originate from kids. For example the Australian accent is thought to have evolved (and continues to evolve) in schools, between children - how much spending in society is shaped by the needs of kids? Not enough I'd say, but they form a huge portion of family budgets, and also a huge market for companies. Kids determine how a lot of a country's money is spent - kids largely determine shifts in musical and fashion styles - kids activate that part of us that is still the kid we once were, psychologists recognise that the stages we live as we get older never actually go away, they sit there as layers that can be accessed again at any time. By doing this it makes us fundamentally different adults.

So many ticks for this one. You could put it even more broadly - always remember the people you're arguing with, are people. Not some ideas rammed into a body. https://www.facebook.com/sogoodnow/videos/686990368151497/

Happy Birthday bionic woman :)

This is really bizarre, it must have implications for other things we do as well. "In short, heroin addicts who can usually tolerate extraordinarily high doses are at risk of overdose if they administer the drug in an environment not previously associated with the drug effect."

Watching this made me think again how much we don't know about animals. And also how lucky we are to have arms.

Happy Birthday funny man :)

Hmm, yes.

Report on the state of Australian schools. Some highlights: - equity in schools is declining (family and personal background are becoming far too important in determining how well you do) - students/families who can afford to are moving in masses to more selective schools - disadvantaged students are becoming increasingly concentrated in disadvantaged schools - local schools no longer reflect the local community, with many students being sent out of the community for schooling - government funding to private schools will now outstrip funding to public schools. http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-State-of-Australias-Schools.pdf

When boomers begin to show some self-awareness and remorse about this, people will stop picking on them. Until that day, name a current major social issue and almost guaranteed it will lead back to this, as its cause.

It's easy to dislike Tolle, but he captures things beautifully sometimes. People struggle to believe this one, but it's almost the meaning of life. “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle