Area Man In Perfect Hibernation

NOARLUNGA-
Firefighters are still baffled as to how local resident Captain Doobie managed to lock himself inside his own refrigerator.

Units from the Flaxmill Rd Fire Station were called to Mr Doobie's residence on Tuesday after Capt. Doobie's housemate, Goodtime Slim, returned home to find him wedged between the margarine and half a plate of spam. Capt. Doobie was founf to be in a state of perfect hibernation and was later revived at Noarlunga Hospital.

Mr Slim stated in a press release that he had left Captain Doobie alone that morning whilst he went to the shops for some biscuits, but had become sidetracked and had not returned home for several hours, whereupon he opened the fridge to find Capt. Doobie's body.

Captain Doobie was believed by many area residents to be conducting extensive experiments into cryogenic freezing. Mr Slim however stated, "I should never have let him purchase a fridge named 'Carbonite'."

Well Well Well.

For once, me and Jeremy Clarkson agree. Which is not of course to say we'll agree tomorrow on the same issue. Jeremy has a nasty habit of changing his mind. Repeatedly.

However, for the moment we agree, and birds are singing, and the world is a better place. Why? Because he's done something that Wheels Car Of The Year failed to do: called the new VE Dunnydore on it's interior plastics.

Remember the 2006 Wheels COTY? For those who came in late, Wheels told all and sundry how the Mitsubishi 380 was near-on perfect save for it's interior plastics, so they awarded COTY to the Mazda MX5, a car which doesn't even have a spare tyre. If this wasn't enough to show everyone the Wheel's COTY irrelevance, the very next year they award the COTY to the VE Commodore, a car which even it's manufacturers admit has terrible interior plastic.

But now the VE (in HSV Clubsport R8 guise) has gone to the Poms. And it's quite popular, except that in the very first review, Jeremy hates....the plastic.

Well done Wheels. Now you're not just a national joke, you're an international joke too. Hurrah.

Gosh!

Young Bobby McGillicuddy was the luckiest boy in the world, for he was the proud owner of an invisible tail which he used to poke people with on the bus.

One day Bobby was travelling to school on the bus. He had a whole seat to himself because as well as his tail he also had an alarming habit of wetting his pants whenever the bus brakes squealed. However, as Bobby was enjoying his big seat a very fat man got on the bus and sat down next to him.

Aha, thought Bobby, this looks like a job for my tail!
Very carefully, Bobby sent his invisible tail around behind the fat man, and poked him. The fat man jumped in alarm, then looked around to find two nuns in the seat behind him. Instead of starting a fight as Bobby had hoped, the man sat down again, pulled his briefcase onto his lap and started sweating a lot. Bobby used his tail to poke him again but it just made the fat man breathe harder.

Bobby decided to use a different strategy. This time, he used his invisible tail to poke one of the giggling high school girls in the seat in front of him. The giggling abruptly stopped. One of the girls looked over the seat at Bobby and the fat, sweaty, breathing man. She screamed. The fat man jumped up, and his briefcase slid from his lap. The girls screamed harder, and one of the nuns fainted. The other, battle hardened, punched the fat man in the nose. The fat man attempted to run, but he was too large to do much more than waddle awkwardly towards the door, with the eyes of the etire bus upon him. Bobby was once again enjoying his nice comfortable seat when the fat man reached the front doors and the driver hit the brakes.

There are some things even an invisible tail can't fix.

Jellybean Flavour or 1946 Luftwaffe Doomsday Weapon?

Lakritze
Kaugummi
Inselpunsch
Pfirsich
Kirsche
Blaubeere
Zuckerwatte
Kokosnuss
Erdbeerdaquiri
Schokoladenpudding

Family History

Funny how a little bit of research can turn up the most interesting stories.

My grandfather, Jack White, died in the late 50s, many years before I was born. I had always been told that this was from the degradation his body had suffered while he was a prisoner-of-war in Changi. That's all anyone ever really knew. According to Dad, he never spoke about the war and neither did Uncle Len, Jack's brother who served in the same unit.

Last week Uncle Len (who's still kicking) sent Dad a clipping from his local newspaper at Port Pirie, where a journalist had published a picture of Jack & Len's unit when they were liberated after the war, not only on Japanese soil, but in Hiroshima! The accompanying story filled in some important details.

Their unit was initially assigned to transport duties, driving ammo trucks between Alice Springs and Darwin. Soon however, they were posted to Singapore, and three weeks later were captured in the Japanese onslaught. They spent about 18 months in the notorious Changi prison, before being posted to Burma to build the railway along the infamous 'Hellfire Pass'. Towards the end of 1944, having survived all that, they were sent to Japan itself, where they were used as slave labour in a coal mine just outside Hiroshima. Here they stayed until the end of the war.

I can only theorise that being inside the coal mine was what saved them from the atomic blast, but I suppose we'll never know for sure. Uncle Len's pushing 90 now (not bad for someone who survived an atomic blast) while my grandfather died just over a decade after returning home.

New Adventures In SF

Some ideas are just way too cool. Recently i've been formulating a new sci-fi short story to hawk to the big sci-fi magazines, entitled "For Once, Gelignite Jack Blows Up Something For The Greater Good", in which Gelignite Jack stumbles upon a reawakened futuristic city that has been buried under the sands of the Gibson Desert for 20000 years during his Round Australia Castrol Trial in 1962.

I won't go into detail except to mention the above really cool idea: cybernetically-augmented attack-thylacines.

Hypotheses and Rational Thinking

This morning, when I was deciding how to travel to work, I was presented with a number of hypotheses, several of which are listed below. This is not an exhaustive list but it is representative.

The hypotheses were:
1. Travel by car.
2. Travel by public transport.
3. Travel by dragon.

None of the above hypotheses are 100% correct: my car could break down, or there could be a public transport strike. However, these two hypotheses are still far more likely than the third. No rational individual would suggest that if I plan to travel to work by dragon, I will be able to. Why not? Many reasons: I do not know anyone who has ever seen a dragon, and those eyewitness accounts of dragons from antiquity contain many factual errors (aerodynamic problems, wing area vs musculature endemic to saurians etc). This leads me to believe that dragons do not exist. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the existence of dragons cannot be 100% disproven. But it can be seen to be so improbable to be safely dismissed in rational calculations. It is extremely unlikely that I will arrive at work in my car to find everyone else laughing at me and asking "why did you waste all that petrol? Why didn't you just come by dragon?" It is so unlikely that in order to carry out my daily life I don't even need to consider it.

The purpose of this is to show that although alternate hypotheses exist for any given situation, not all need to be given equal weight of consideration. Some hypotheses are so incredible that to give them any weight beyond the lip service that they cannot be disproven is irrational. This is particularly illuminating in light of the question posed to me on Saturday night: that I cannot disprove the existence of god(s), so why act as though I can? Because the possibility of any god(s) existence is so slight that, in the same way that I don't seriously consider riding a dragon to work, I don't give it any credence. God(s) may exist as god(s) cannot be disproven, but the possibility of their existence is so remote that it need not enter into any calculation. As the French mathematician Laplace stated to Napoleon when asked why his book on the mechanics of gravitation contained no mention of the christian god: "I have no need of that hypothesis."

7 Habits Of Highly Successful People

Over the course of my heady career in business and commerce, i've learned some basic truths which see me through the day. Many of these have been taught to me by mentors and people I highly respect, and all have served me well.

1. Never trust a man in grey shoes.
2. Don't procrastinate. If a job is worth doing, it's worth doing now.
3. Don't back down. Ever. However, don't expect unrealistic results in the first place.
4. Never trust a man who wears a bowtie to a meeting.
5. Silence is golden. You'll achieve a lot more by letting everyone else talk themselves into a corner.
6. Big jobs only look big until you start. After that, they're usually easy.
7. Take the road less travelled. Innovation is the key.

Teleblog

Recently, a friend of mine blogged that she was feeling a little isolated in that she doesn't own a tv. Well, i'd just like to reassure her by saying that that I do, but last Sunday night I turned it on for the first time in a month. It exists solely for me to watch channel 10's Formula 1 coverage, and that's it. I really can't be bothered with anything else. Over the summer it lay dormant for months until I decided to watch Top Gear on SBS, but after that finished it went into hibernation again.

However, the odds are good that it will be turned on again this Sunday night, to watch Professor Richard Dawkins' excellent look at organised religion: "The Root Of All Evil?" This is on Compass on the ABC, and although i've seen it thanks to t'internet I may turne in again, as it does contain one of my favorite pieces of dialogue. Prof Dawkins is talking to the head priest guy at Lourdes:

Dawkins: Many people come here seeking a cure. What do they actually get?
Priest dude: People get all sorts of things here. A sense of calm, of closure, a sense of health and welllbeing. I think these things are all terribly important.

Dawkins: Yes, but what about a cure?

Rules Of Life

You know you're having a bad day when you find yourself hoping for a serious industrial accident to occur so that you can go home.

I Don't Mean To Get All Political, But...

I'm not sure if Robert Mugabe, Dictator of Zimbabwe, reads this blog, but in case he does, i've got Something To Say.
Mr Mugabe: Before you continue your long-winded polemic against Australia for not sending our cricket team over to whip your dusty little shithole country's arse, please be aware that the Australian military arsenal still contains 300 cruise missiles, and 30 F-111s. Incidentally, these F-111s are the same airframes that the yanks used to bomb Colonel Gadaffi all to fuck, because we bought them afterwards.

Some might accuse me of advocating gunboat diplomacy here but hey, why else do we own gunboats?

Bands Jesus Probably Wouldn't Like

Judas Priest
Nine Inch Nails

Johnny-come-latelys!

If I were a rich man, it is my supreme hope that I would be like Thurston Powell the Third. This is, quite simply, just what a real millionaire should look, sound and act like.

I'm sure that you, like me, are sick to death of the cashed-up 'elite' of this world. Paris Hilton, Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Packer etc. Take it from me, if you were to clumsily carry an armful of coconut cream pies past them and accidentally trip, there wouldn't be a one-liner or snappy comeback from any of them. It makes me sick that there isn't some sort of finishing school. White pants, a double-breasted navy blue sports jacket and a cravat. I'd like to see Bernie Ecclesone in that!

Coming Soon To A Cinema Near You.

Recentely, Spiderman 3 set a new precedent for Superhero movies, when he only beat one out of 3 villains. The other two he spoke to nicely and they changed their minds about being evil and stuff. Hopefully, this will set a trend for this summer's hottest releases:

Superman Returns A Bit More: Superman and Lex Luthor take their grievances to the arbitration comission. Lex loses, and is forced to do community service, during which he befriends some sort of spastic orphan.

Batman Begins Again: Batman and the Joker face off in the ultimate battle: a Crotchet-a-thon to raise money for the Gotham Community Church roof repair fund. Whose doily will win? But beware, the Riddler gatecrashes with a ball of illegal 2-ply!

Captain America: Captain America bends over and takes one for the team from a clone of Adolf Hitler. Then they declare their love for each other in a civil ceremony and go off to breed poodles in rural Delaware. Soundtrack by Elton John.

The Phantom 2: Kit Walker is not allowed to take Devil on the plane from Bangalla due to quarantine restrictions. The Singh Brotherhood agree to fly them both to the US in their undersea dirigibles, and announce that they are turning from generations of piracy to sea-cucumber aquafarming. The Phantom finds trouble on the docks, so he mediates a pareto-optimal solution using the new enterprise-bargaining laws.

Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman reads a book by Danielle Steel. That's about it. For 2 hours. At one point she eats a biscuit.

Sports Report: Celebrity Thunderdome

Sunday night's match at the Bartertown Thunderdome had pundits labelling it The Tussle of The Emerald Isle. To a packed cage, in the blue corner sat the Lord Of The Dance himself Michael Flatley; whilst in the red corner, resplendent in his trademark white suit sat singing sensation Daniel O'donnell. O'donnell was said to be a favorite of Aunty Entity herself, although he appeared nervous early.

Flatley came out strongly in the first round, his co-ordination and spatial awareness clearly catching O'donnell on the hop as he fully utilised his elasticised hip-ropes to vault clear over O'donnell. There were several times in the first round when it appeared that O'donnell was about to throw in the towel. However, after a brief break, O'donnell returned with a much stronger game. While Flatley clearly was still the more agile of the two O'donnell made an early leap and secured the use of the big hammer. This then forced Flatley to lunge desperately for the chainsaw.

Every sport has it's misunderstood rules, and for my mind every sport needs them. Cricket has LBW, AFL has holding-the-ball, and Thunderdome has the iffy-start chainsaw. Despite the boos and catcalls of the crowd Flatley was unable to start the deliberately detuned Husquevarna, which resulted in O'donnell delivering a crushing blow to his hip. Limping badly, Flatley was then pummelled several times by a mostly airborne O'Donnell who never looked back. Wielding the big hammer like an enormous metal fist O'Donnel reduced Flatley's body to a lifeless husk in a matter of minutes, eventially pulverising the neck to the point at which he was able to detach it and throw it into the crowd where in a touching moment it was caught by a young orphan with a speech impediment and grotty hair.

Full credit must be given to Aunty for initiating the celebrity matches here at the Thunderdome. To all those who doubted the validity of the idea I can only point out that despite the warnings and the nay-sayings, tonight two men entered, and one man left.

The Ancestor's Tale, by Richard Dawkins

Having recently become enamoured with Richard Dawkins' excellent atheistic tome "The God Delusion", I thought it might be time to sort out this evolution malarkey. I'd never really understood it, which was one reason I stayed agnostic for so long. So I thought i'd read The Ancestor's Tale, which pretty much sums up the whole thing.

Except that it really doesn't. I was looking for an explanation of how genes mutate, and maybe i'm missing something, but that mechanism didn't seem to be spelled out here. Maybe it was assumed knowledge. Dawkins certainly didn't embarrassedly hedge around it, so I can only surmise that it's so basic a concept that it didn't need explaining twice. He seemed to do that a lot: simply referring to his earlier works than use the same explanation twice. It's a bit of a bugger, but I suppose i'd better read "The Selfish Gene" now.

I understand about natural selection, but The Ancestor's Tale also introduced me to the concept of sexual selection, something I had previously not thought about. It also looked at the preconditions for race, quite fairly and without judgement.

All in all, a good 'little' book, by which I mean that I enjoyed it, but it took me about a month of hard slogging to get through. Now I think i'll go for something lighter, "Journeys With Gelignite Jack", by Evan Green. Stay tuned.