...but I quite like remaining married.
http://www.nervoussquirrel.com/badgermin.html
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Stupid journo of the day
Just in case you haven't had your morning dose of stupid yet, you might as well get it over with and read this little gem of an article.
It doesn't appear to have occurred to the scribbler that people are paid an annual income, which gets divided by 52 to derive a weekly pay - something that doesn't change whether it's a leap year or not. If our rocket scientist journo (who presumably does their rough drafts in crayon) can point to the work week where anyone works 8 days instead of 7 for the same money, I'd love to see it.
Personally though, I reckon the idea of getting married on February 29 would be awesome - only one anniversary every 4 years.
It doesn't appear to have occurred to the scribbler that people are paid an annual income, which gets divided by 52 to derive a weekly pay - something that doesn't change whether it's a leap year or not. If our rocket scientist journo (who presumably does their rough drafts in crayon) can point to the work week where anyone works 8 days instead of 7 for the same money, I'd love to see it.
Personally though, I reckon the idea of getting married on February 29 would be awesome - only one anniversary every 4 years.
Monday, February 27, 2012
OK, I just found a use for a tablet.
Damn, this is one hell of a cool idea.
Are you listening, AppleMicrosoftSonySamsungAcerPanasonic?
I need to have a phone with me. It needs to be a smartphone, because I need mobile web and mail. What I don't need is to be paying for more than one cell account just because I want connectivity on other devices, and I won't pack a lump of tablet with me 24/7 just for a few lousy inches of extra screen.
Wires, cables and connectors suck. I hate carting them around. I'm not so sure about tying myself into one proprietary format and manufacturer like this, but as soon as you go off the reservation and start inventing your own standards, the attractiveness of your product goes down.
Put some freaking connectors on your device (are you listening, Apple?). I need a couple of USBs, ethernet, and a HD video out at least - I don't care if it's HDMI or Displayport, you can't please everyone. You might as well include line-level mic and speaker for basic earbud usage. Wifi and Bluetooth will take care of most everything else. The SD slot is cool, but I'm not paying a premium for it.
Hey, Apple - notice the device still has a freakin' optical drive?? We want those, and will for some time yet. Deal with it, you don't define the world.
Now, if the whole thing just ran open source, we'd have convergence. Although the video card is still going to suck.
PS - gadget manufacturers - will you please, FFS, get it together on a standard for inductive charging. Everybody, every single person, without exception, in the entire world, hates charging devices. Around my house at the moment I have on charge:
Are you listening, AppleMicrosoftSonySamsungAcerPanasonic?
I need to have a phone with me. It needs to be a smartphone, because I need mobile web and mail. What I don't need is to be paying for more than one cell account just because I want connectivity on other devices, and I won't pack a lump of tablet with me 24/7 just for a few lousy inches of extra screen.
Wires, cables and connectors suck. I hate carting them around. I'm not so sure about tying myself into one proprietary format and manufacturer like this, but as soon as you go off the reservation and start inventing your own standards, the attractiveness of your product goes down.
Put some freaking connectors on your device (are you listening, Apple?). I need a couple of USBs, ethernet, and a HD video out at least - I don't care if it's HDMI or Displayport, you can't please everyone. You might as well include line-level mic and speaker for basic earbud usage. Wifi and Bluetooth will take care of most everything else. The SD slot is cool, but I'm not paying a premium for it.
Hey, Apple - notice the device still has a freakin' optical drive?? We want those, and will for some time yet. Deal with it, you don't define the world.
Now, if the whole thing just ran open source, we'd have convergence. Although the video card is still going to suck.
PS - gadget manufacturers - will you please, FFS, get it together on a standard for inductive charging. Everybody, every single person, without exception, in the entire world, hates charging devices. Around my house at the moment I have on charge:
- at least four mobile phones
- three laptops
- a cordless drill
- a cordless vacuum
- a robot vacuum
- a torch
- a set of wireless headphones
- a bunch of Ni-MH batteries for the damn devices that take cells
- a camera
- a fish tank gravel cleaner
- a wireless keyboard
- a wireless mouse
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Gun rules
1. Guns have only two enemies: rust and politicians. Australia has both, and the latter is far more destructive.
2. It’s always better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6.
3. Cops carry guns to protect themselves - not you.
4. Never let someone or something that threatens you get inside arm’s length. Preferably several arm’s lengths.
5. Never say, “I’ve got a gun.” If you need to use deadly force, the first sound they hear should be the safety clicking off.
6. The average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes; the response time of a .45 is 1000 feet per second.
7. The most important rule in a gunfight is: always win. Cheat if necessary. There are no points awarded for style or chivalry.
8. Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets . . . You may get killed with your own gun, but he’ll have to beat you to death with it, because it’ll be empty.
9. If you’re in a gunfight:
- If you’re not shooting, you should be loading.
- If you’re not loading, you should be moving.
- If you’re not moving, you’re dead.
10. In a life and death situation, do something . . . It may be wrong, but do something!
11. If you carry a gun, people call you paranoid. Nonsense! If you have a gun, what do you have to be paranoid about?
12. You can say ‘stop’ or ‘alto’ or any other word, but a large bore muzzle pointed at someone’s head is pretty much a universal language.
13. You cannot save the planet, but you may be able to save yourself and your family.
Friday, February 17, 2012
Talking crap with the right wing media
There really is no end that the right wing media in this country will not crawl to to find an excuse to criticise the current Labor government.
Liberal supporters, I realise you're really bitter about losing the last election. I appreciate that it burns inside you how close you came to making it, but still failed. I can understand how you're so close you can almost taste it, and constantly obsess about it.
But the reality is that you lost, and at the moment you come across as the most petulant, tantrum throwing, foot stamping, whiny, needy children Australian politics has seen for years.
Case in point: federal unemployment figures were released yesterday, showing a surprise fall in the national unemployment rate falling from 5.2 to 5.1 per cent - something that apparently took even the government a little by surprise.
This apparently wrong-footed the right wing media for a while; they would have had their usual, tired old "the carbon tax is going to ruin the Australian economy" spiel printed out and ready to go. Unfortunately for them, the real world isn't behaving and supporting their nice little prejudice this time around.
So what left to do? Play the man and not the ball - let's attack the basis the figures were measured using! About the only thing they could find to do so was that "employment" was defined as working at least 1 hour per week. This was immediately parodied by every right wing radio jock in the country, I personally heard Chris Smith and Brian Wilshire having a go. Their points of view came down to this being an unrealistic way of gauging workforce participation, not reflective of actual numbers, a way of hiding actual FTE rate etc.
Unfortunately for our increasingly desperate anti-Labor campaigners, they are, as usual, full of crap to the eyeballs, as the most casual analysis demonstrates.
The basis on which the figures are measured is largely immaterial to yesterday's announcement, because what was announced was a change in rate. As long as the measurement basis remained unchanged from sample to sample, the improvement was real. Sorry boys, but yes - real unemployment fell.
Secondly, the basis for measurement of participation rate as been the same since February 2001, and the last time I checked, the federal Liberal party were close to the middle of an 11-year term at the time. I'd say the basis for comparison has been pretty stable?
Finally, some of the other tripe I hear Chris Smith dribble was that "encouraging students to stay in school until the end of year 12 would be artificially lowering the ranks of the unemployed". Chris, you are really reaching with that one. Quite apart from the fact that every government for the last... gee, more or less forever? has been trying to do that, the numbers involved are a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the total. According to the ABS, there are approximately 250,000 students in year 12 study at a given time, whereas over 46,000 people found new employment according to yesterday's report. If class sizes went up nearly 20% in the last six months you'd hear the screams of the teacher's unions across the country.
It would appear that the numbers Chris is quoting are about as tiny as the amount of work he put into dreaming them up.
I found the amost perfect picture this morning to illustrate the outlook of the right-wing media in this country, just substitute names like Chris Smith and Steve Price in as required.
And as always, a truer word has never been spoken.
Liberal supporters, I realise you're really bitter about losing the last election. I appreciate that it burns inside you how close you came to making it, but still failed. I can understand how you're so close you can almost taste it, and constantly obsess about it.
But the reality is that you lost, and at the moment you come across as the most petulant, tantrum throwing, foot stamping, whiny, needy children Australian politics has seen for years.
Case in point: federal unemployment figures were released yesterday, showing a surprise fall in the national unemployment rate falling from 5.2 to 5.1 per cent - something that apparently took even the government a little by surprise.
This apparently wrong-footed the right wing media for a while; they would have had their usual, tired old "the carbon tax is going to ruin the Australian economy" spiel printed out and ready to go. Unfortunately for them, the real world isn't behaving and supporting their nice little prejudice this time around.
So what left to do? Play the man and not the ball - let's attack the basis the figures were measured using! About the only thing they could find to do so was that "employment" was defined as working at least 1 hour per week. This was immediately parodied by every right wing radio jock in the country, I personally heard Chris Smith and Brian Wilshire having a go. Their points of view came down to this being an unrealistic way of gauging workforce participation, not reflective of actual numbers, a way of hiding actual FTE rate etc.
Unfortunately for our increasingly desperate anti-Labor campaigners, they are, as usual, full of crap to the eyeballs, as the most casual analysis demonstrates.
The basis on which the figures are measured is largely immaterial to yesterday's announcement, because what was announced was a change in rate. As long as the measurement basis remained unchanged from sample to sample, the improvement was real. Sorry boys, but yes - real unemployment fell.
Secondly, the basis for measurement of participation rate as been the same since February 2001, and the last time I checked, the federal Liberal party were close to the middle of an 11-year term at the time. I'd say the basis for comparison has been pretty stable?
Finally, some of the other tripe I hear Chris Smith dribble was that "encouraging students to stay in school until the end of year 12 would be artificially lowering the ranks of the unemployed". Chris, you are really reaching with that one. Quite apart from the fact that every government for the last... gee, more or less forever? has been trying to do that, the numbers involved are a tiny, infinitesimal fraction of the total. According to the ABS, there are approximately 250,000 students in year 12 study at a given time, whereas over 46,000 people found new employment according to yesterday's report. If class sizes went up nearly 20% in the last six months you'd hear the screams of the teacher's unions across the country.
It would appear that the numbers Chris is quoting are about as tiny as the amount of work he put into dreaming them up.
I found the amost perfect picture this morning to illustrate the outlook of the right-wing media in this country, just substitute names like Chris Smith and Steve Price in as required.
And as always, a truer word has never been spoken.
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