The Bogan Institute

2012-02-01T03:34:00.000-08:00

2007-09-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

Terms I can understand.
So some massive collision of two stars happens and makes a big splosion detected by astronomers. I assume that they used a big calculator to work out that around 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 J or 10 to the power of 33 Joules of energy was released. Of course the layman isn't really going to understand how much energy that really is so The Age did a unit conversion into layman's terms: "equivalent to the amount of energy that around 185.3 billion average Australian homes would use in a year." ... Yes now I understand, roughly the equivalent of two Toyota Landcruisers colliding.

2007-09-23T16:50:00.001-07:00

Sunday, Gorey Sunday.
Took the dog for a walk at Yarra Bend on Sunday morning and crossing the bridge to Studley Park boathouse I could see four or five abandoned tripods arranged in a row. Seconds later four camera crews come bolting out of the bushes arranging their cameras and microphones in time to see Al Gore climb the stairway to Kevin.

If I was as gutsy as I like to think I am I would have sent my dog to poop on command at the feet of Al and then would have asked some smart-arse question to get me on that night's TV news. Alas I'm not very gutsy, not very clever, and didn't really fancy a tazering so I left things at taking a picture with my phone.

2007-07-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

If John Smeaton isn't a Household Name by Friday...
then there's something wrong with the world. You must go visit http://www.johnsmeaton.com/ and donate a pint to the one man war on terror.

A notable exceprt from the comments page:

EO Says: July 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Some more things you didn’t know about our man here ….

John’s tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
Rather than being birthed like a normal child, John Smeaton instead decided to punch his way out of his mother’s womb.
John Smeaton once flying kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean.
John Smeaton sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, John flying kicked the devil in the face and took his soul.
The chief export of John Smeaton is pain.
John Smeaton lost his virginity before his dad did.
After much debate, President Truman decided to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima rather than the alternative of sending John Smeaton. His reasoning? It was more “humane”.
One of the greatest cover-ups of the last century was the fact that Hitler did not commit suicide in his bunker, but was in fact tea-bagged to death John Smeaton

2007-07-01T21:02:00.000-07:00

Prime Minister Extends Helping Hand, Iron Fist, and Middle Finger Simultaneously.
Say what you like about the Man of Steel - If the Mutujulu plan isn't a political masterpiece I don't know what is. I reckon he might just conjured up a 5th-order win-win-win-win-win situation - When I've got some time I might even try to work out where it's all headed. I'm no geo-political expert but what could possibly go wrong with deploying Australian armed forces against our own citizens? I even had to write an email to a friend in sunny Scotland to see if he's heard the news.

I'm quite proud of the email a spewed out in a rush after the weekend's news - I might have to do some more blogging on these boring old political subjects because there isn't enough of it on the internet. So here's a copy of my email rant with spellage errors and everything:

Been watching the news from Glasgow airport. Those head hacking foreigners are an embarrassment to the species. Looks like Osama must really be scraping the bottom of the barrell for recruits. Was it that these clowns slipped through the intelligence dragnet by being rightly dimissed by some analyst as being too stupid for entry-level terrorism (a stupidity level markedly below the pre-requisite level of stupidity for Islamo-nuttism but somehow still sufficient to eat, breathe etc...)?

Has there been any news in the UK on the Prime Minister's plan to send in the armed forces to curb our more savage indigenous citizens from boozing up and rooting their kids? The outcries over lack of sensitivity to indigenous culture have already started. The Prime Minister who refused to say sorry to the 'stolen generation' has just upped the stakes and extended a middle finger - it's political genius on so many levels.

And those Cheese eaters have just elected themselves a reformist who, on the face of it, hates America less than any other Frenchman in history. I assume the protest tractors are approaching Paris as we speak. I even hear that the surrender monkeys might even deploy a combat squad that might be allowed to shoot their guns in Darfur just in time to watch the last African refugree slaughtered in February next year - that's if they can push the paperwork through Brussels, and the UN.

At least its snowing - our climate change induced drought has transformed itself to climate change induced cold weather and rain.

I must have been in a good mood.

2007-06-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

Stupid (Murderous) Google
Google tried to kill me the other day by telling me to make a sharp right hand turn from Punt Road onto Citylink. Even though I got my free Dukes of Hazzard keyring at the video library the other day there are still some driving manouvres I consider to be unreasonably difficult.

Try asking maps.google.com how to get from "Richmond VIC Australia" to "South Melbourne VIC Australia" and watch it try to murder you.

2007-06-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

Mazda's Automatic Transmission Uses Mind Control.

The bride took delivery of her new Mazda CX-7 two weekends ago, and it's good (it goes fast, has heated seats and a loud radio). However the car just stepped into a whole new league of HAL9000 style intelligence/creepiness when we were rolling down Speed Camera Hill in Kew (Princess Street toward the Eastern Freeway). Everyone knows you need a hint of brakes just to keep it under the 60+3% km/h threshold on this stretch of road where the police promise to 'serve and collect'. Any other automatic car I've driven previously needed me to push a button or move the gear selector from "D" to 3rd or some other such manual measure to give a bit of engine braking to save me from riding the brakes all the way down. So just as I was getting to the thought of moving the stick down a gear the car read my mind and changed from 4th to 3rd, going downhill with my foot off the accelerator! My jaw hit the floor - the car just read my mind... How did it do that? Some might figure it's because some computer sensed throttle position was idle, speed was slightly increasing and brakes were slightly on - No way, can you imagine getting a software developer to actually write the code to do that? It would never happen and it would have 36 life-threatening bugs. The more feasible explanation: it just read my mind using the little blue light in the ceiling.

Has anyone else noticed the little blue mind-reader in the ceiling of Mazda CX-7's? It's a bit creepy. It also seems to turn the stereo up when driving faster, turns the headlights on etc... just by me thinking about it. The dealer couldn't explain what the little blue light was for - now I know. Ostensibly for "safety and convenience" what sinister purpose does this mind-reading car actually serve?

2007-05-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

How Religions Promote by Persecution
Here's my new theory, someone's probably already thought of it and made a million selling books but that won't stop me from claiming it as my own:

If there is a genetic influence on gayness then the long term persecution of gays by social institutions such as the church has probably worked to increase rather than decrease the proportion of gays in society. Why? If the persecution of a group gets serious enough they'll adapt their overt behaviour to avoid it. That is, a proportion of gay blokes rather than live a tasteful, well-decorated and probably childless domestic life risking beatings, stoning, inprisonment, torture or execution will take the less life threatening route of entering a sham marriage that bears kids - and pass on potentially gay genes if such things exist.

So the theory holds that if societies adopt tolerant and liberal social attitudes the net effect should be an increase in happy gay couples who either don't have kids or adopt some resulting, long term, in a relative reduction in the proportion of the population with gay tendencies compared to intolerant societies. The theory probably doesn't apply to girls.

Whatever. The thing I like about the theory is that I can go anger some religious nuts with it. Now where's that PhD?

2007-05-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

Standby for a New Theorum
On Saturday morning I had an idea. It's a pretty good one, related to the Laws of Unintended Consequences. It's so good in fact that I think I'll award myself an honorary PhD from the Bogan Institute. I'll put finger to keyboard tonight and elaborate.

2007-03-28T23:09:00.000-07:00

Straits Times can't get the slang right.

I reckon the author has confused the the meaning of the word 'dissed' with dismissed or disagreed. Were pedestrians disrespecting the idea of fines? I don't think so. If the Straits Times isn't careful it might give people the impression that Singaporeans have a tendency to mangle the English language. If you're going to use slang in a broadsheet, at least get it right. My head is paining.

Image taken with my phone of a weekend edition of the Straits Times from February 2007.

2007-01-21T02:05:00.000-08:00

Vietnamese Brick Cart

Snapped this gem in Hanoi. Note the rider's application of right foot on the bricks.

2007-01-15T17:49:00.000-08:00

One Day I'll Grow Up... and get a Kamaz!

The top photo is me, and I think that's five time Dakar winner Vlaidmir Chagine in the Kamaz. If I was rich, or good at driving trucks I would so do that.

2007-01-07T19:59:00.000-08:00

IKEA is the Pinnacle of Human Civilization.

On Boxing day I didn't have trouble finding a car spot, bought two large chests of drawers, and assembled them without:

Waiting in queues
Having to deal with unreasonable, unruly or unkempt staff
Getting stuck in traffic
Any remaining nuts/bolts/awls/joggles/widgets
Any remaining holes where nuts/bolts/awls/joggles/widgets are supposed to go
Regret that what I bought sucked.

From my perspective the whole excercise was totally flawless on potentially the worst shopping day of the year. The employees, shareholders and suppliers of IKEA deserve every cent of whatever profit they made from me replacing the ugly cheap pine drawers I used to have with nice cheap MDF drawers. I also can't believe the win-win of customer self-assembly of furniture. I assume the logistics of transport and storage of flat-packed furniture are orders-of-magnitude more efficient than fully assembled stuff but this should be detrimental to the customer experience - instead I had a ball putting it together, sending the satisfaction meter off the scale.

I also was totally impressed by the design, partiularly the materials used, it was pretty much all MDF or Chipboard for the large bits which I assume would be the most efficient form of timber usage because you can pretty much use a whole tree rather than just the best bits of the trunk - but even the "solid timber" beams were a really neat laminate of a heap of small pieces dovetailed together - I'd imagine that again you can reduce the need for high value, long lengths of flawless timber by using these composites.

And the whole 70kg payload was packaged with less than 2 kg of packaging most of which was cardboard that is of sufficient surface area to host a war between crews of breakers and poppers.

2006-12-11T15:02:00.000-08:00

Looking to reduce your environmental footprint? - Me neither.

For every petrol guzzling monster you don't buy, I'm going to buy three.

Ross has fulfilled his civic duty by heightening tensions in the war on the environment. He may have won the battle, but I'm still winning the war. Just to put the right perspective on things - he has bigger tyres on one of his cars, one of which is a mini. I own three four-wheel-drives one of which is a petrol V8. Checkmate.

2006-08-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

Prepaid Credit Card - The Nonsequitur, You Shouldn't Leave Home Without.
Spend like James Bond at a tenth of the price. You can now get an almost anonymous VISA card that allows you to buy stuff on the internet whilst staying off-the-grid. Just like you used to be able to get a numbered VISA card from Credit Suisse or UBS you can now get a card that you can load with good old anonymous cash at your local shops without the expensive hassle of operating a Swiss bank account. My mind is boggling with the nefarious opportunities this new product opens up... Vengeance on 419 scammers, irresponsible pranks on friends... it's all solid gold. My thoughts on the concept are that you can use the card in a similar way to the disposable email address you use to sign up for free stuff on the internet knowing full well that that address is going to have the bejesus spammed out of it. If this all sounds to you like a shameless ad for prepaid crdit cards... guess what... you're right, it is. If you all get a BOPO card I might get rich which is the first step in my two step plan to become a bum. The plan is quite simple:

Step 1: Get rich.
Step 2: Stop going to work.

I should probably write a motivational piece on bum-ism, maybe a book, and then become a life-coach. I hear there's some bloke in Scotland who is pioneering the intellectual field of 'Idle Theory'. Something about the orthodoxy of survival of the fittest being wrong, and the reality is that nature favours those that are most idle. I'm a fan, and I would look it up but I couldn't be bothered. In any case you should click on the BOPO link... go on, you know you want to just click on it.

2006-07-20T01:40:00.000-07:00

TV Gives People Unrealistic Interoperability Expectations.
The effciency, effectiveness and reliability with which TV characters can perform all sorts of complex tasks with computers is making my life difficult and it's further weakening society's pansy grip on reality.

Lets take Jack Bauer in the TV show 24, top bloke and tough guy. He can get someone at the office to send some map of another office building of which he's about to kick the door in, with little red dots representing all the bad guys, to his electronic PDA updated in real-time without:

Weak signals, drop outs, lack of call credit, blocked services, flat batteries etc..
Having to remember his password that the I.T. dept insists he change every two weeks
Having to call the person who's getting the map twice, send them an email and fax, only to get the 'what's address was it again?' -- 'oh that's on the old system.... You'll need to use the other software version 3.501.3.4765.6.2.6.8 to see the map properly, but its not compatible with your PDA'
Having to sift through 145 other messages about viagra or earning cash fast.
Waiting for virus updates to finish downloading so that the system can reboot and duplicate his contact list and forget all his appointments.

My problem is that some people are getting the idea that technology should be 100% reliable, seamless and easy to use and I reckon they're getting that idea from TV. The reality of finite reliability, cross compatibility and its relationship with cost and time is lost on what seems to be a vast swathe of the population that keeps asking me why some stuff doesn't work. I don't know whether to rail aganst the tide of believers in the 100% ideal, try to convert them to reality... or should I depart reality, join them in their glorious and impossible vision of the world and live a happier, and more ignorant life?

2006-07-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

It's not meat... it's duck.
My latest favourite TV show genre has to be the Border Patrol/Security reality series following the daily activities of customs officers in Australia and New Zealand. In the same way that I never get sick of seeing some bloke getting his nuts smashed by a blindfolded kid flailing at a piñata, I never get sick of foreigners running the gantlet of customs officers, getting pulled up, then using exactly the same set of lame excuses. My favourite plot is:

Foreigner plans on carrying food into the country, packs bags with food and flys to Australia or New Zealand.
Foreigner ticks 'No' on the customs form declaring that they are not carrying food.
Customs officer suspects that foreigner is in fact carrying food, asks foreigner if they are carrying food.
Foreigner clearly says 'No, I'm not carrying food'
Customs officer asks to see inside foreigner's bag... which invariably is full of food.
Highlight: Foreigner angrily claims that food (duck, pork, sweetcorn, bananas, mangos, chicken feet etc) is not food -"This isn't food, it's duck/pork/sweetcorn/bananas/mangos/chicken feet" which in the case of chicken feet, monkey brains, and fish scrotums they'd at least be partially right.
Customs officer then states that you could cop as little as a $200 fine or at max go to prison for six months. Checks the computer then find's out this same character has tried the same thing on 6 months ago when they last came to Australia/New Zealand. Asks what foreigner has to say in their defence.
Foreigner either cries or gets really angry... "This would never happen where I came from"
Customs officer and viewer then think to themselves 'Yeah, probably because where you come from is a corrupt shithole'.
Customs officer slaps them with $200 fine... 'Next'

Reality TV gold.

2006-07-16T23:30:00.000-07:00

Prediction: World War 3 to Start Thursday, Lunchtime.
WW3 Starts will start on Thursday for three reasons:
1. Italy won the World Cup and everyone else wanted France to win. So everyone is in a bad mood and just feels like punching on - this applies equally to states as it does to sports fans.
2. Italy won the World Cup so all the piles of out-of-date unused flares and other celebratory devices including MOABs and laser guided munitions that everyone was busting to let off with a French victory are just sitting in the garages of very disappointed and angry punters. This applies equally to states as it does to sports fans.
3. Israel and the neighbours just don't get along, this last week particularly so. Normally no one would care because that's just Middle Eastern culture at work. Though with all those Americans sick of policing Johnny terrorist in Iraq and itching to get into a good old fashioned state-on-state barney any invitation may just be too tempting.

This week's stock tips: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon.

2006-07-02T20:31:00.000-07:00

Dream Job: Destructive Testing.
When smashing a Benz into a concrete block to watch the air bags go off gets a bit tedious try crashing a chairlift. I don't know if these guys were selling tickets but I would have paid bigtime. Apparently there are videos somewhere.

2006-06-19T22:32:00.000-07:00

FIFA Bias Against Australia: Proven.
photo: stolen from another website, probably orginally from Reuters, AFP or Getty Images

It seems that Harry Kewell's outburst against the German match referee on Sunday was not only understandable, it was justified. The referee's behaviour now appears to be just the tip of a rotten iceberg of corruption at FIFA.

Lets look at the stats for Australia V Brazil in the Group F match:
Actual Ball Possession: 54% Brazil, 46% Australia
Photos from FIFA website actually showing ball posession: 78% Brazil, 22% Australia

I need not look any further to validly conclude that FIFA is officially 24% biased against Australia. No one can argue with that. Anyone else got evidence?

2006-06-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

Big News - I'm changing the name of my blog.
I reckon that 'Bogan is the New Black' is too wanky - Despite my initial thoughts the title of the blog was suitably ironic and witty - it's just wanky and therefore I need to dump it.

So now I need a new one. A title that reflects the seriousness, importance and stuffy conservatism of all that I write here. Something that will make it intelligent and powerful... despite the fact that the writing is everything but that. Basically it needs to look and sound like the work of a 'think tank', whatever that is.

I hereby announce the creation of, The Bogan Institute.

2006-05-29T06:36:00.000-07:00

Gretel Killeen: Put up, or shut up... actually just shut up.

photo: www.behindbigbrother.com

It seems that Big Brother prankster Michael has had to spend the last 24 post-eviction hours explaining to the nation that he isn't a homo. The reason he had to do the explaining was a suggestive bit of footage aired prime-time on Sunday night that looked like he was planting a big wet one on Brokeback Mountain man David in the bathroom.

In a live, on air exchange with host Gretel Killeen, Michael attempted to explain to viewers that the editing on Sunday night gave the wrong impression and that had the footage run longer it would have been clear to viewers that the event was a practical joke. Gretel, being a rank apologist for the sleazebags that produce Big Brother could not of course let him make his point. Her counter-argument to Michael's claim that editing of the footage misrepresented the event was that the producers didn't 'edit' the footage. And she insisted on interrupting him mid-sentence on trivial, pedantic points of language that served only to interrupt his ability to make his fundamental point. Gretel...get fucked. If you choose when the footage starts, when the footage stops and which camera it comes from then that counts as 'editing' in the context of Michael's argument. I have no doubt the the footage was timed to be as sensational as possible. What I can't believe is that Killen had the gall to claim that it wasn't. She claimed that Michael's assertions about editing were an unjustifiable attack that could only be taken personally by her on behalf of the hard-working, slimey turds that produce the show... assertions that reminded her of her own children's. Well if your kids are shouted down with misguided semantics from a woman who takes pride in the production of a TV show mentioned in parliament for plunging to new depths of public bad taste, I'm going to side with them... shut the hell up.

2006-05-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Bogan Crisis: Wankers on the Rise.

Wankers, Bogans
In-depth Analysis using Google Trends proves in fact that the world bogan index is on the decline. This disturbing trend is sparking fears with me that wankers may soon force all of us to give up meat pies and VB. Importantly the rise in the wankerism trend correlates strongly to the All Ordinaries Index prompting this bogan to begin warnings of a stockmarket crash. With this many wankers in the system pumping share prices something's got to give, BHP Billiton wasn't built on Chardonnay you know. Mark my words, 2008 is going to be a bad year for all those BMW driving show offs with more taste than brains.

2006-05-09T00:59:00.000-07:00

Big Brother 'AO' Vs 'Uncut'
Host Gretel at the outset seemed to make quite an ineffective effort explaining to us viewers exactly how different the new 'Adult Only' version of Big Brother is completely different to the weekly sleaze-fest screened last series as 'Uncut'. As far as I can tell though it (thankfully) has only been an excercise in re-branding with the standard of programming continuing to live up to last season's highs (or lows depending on your perspective). The exception to this seems to be the regulation of alcohol consumption - I think that's un-Australian. Boony wouldn't have set the record if Qantas had adopted that policy. What other potential areas of world's best practice are being stifled by Big Brother's oppression?

I also want to question the censor's policy on the Live show broadcast late at night. About a week ago I tuned in before Letterman was due to come on to see the Brokeback Mountain character on big brother explaining exactly how challenging it is being a homo on a farm. He was explaining that a fair proportion of rural gay blokes top themselves and in fact it wasn't that long ago that he found himself sitting in a ute with the barrel of a 12 gauge in his mouth... [beeeeeeeep], [cut to Late night host with some SMS competition] ... What the? Facing numerous bad-taste arguments the producers argue that the show is a valuable excercise in exploring the psychology of Australia's youth and not a cheap, drunken boob-a-thon. Yeah right. Maybe they'll now argue that the show is actually doing the young bloke a favour by putting him on 24 hour live suicide watch.

2006-05-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

Land Rover 1, Toyota 0.
With the price of fuel skyrocketing through $1.40 a litre it was time to get the car muddy. Some state forest near Leongatha was the venue, Bruce brought his Land Cruiser - and a healthy dose of accelerator pedal. Pictured is Bruce's car stuck in a conundrum uphill from resonably serious tree - can't go up because there's no grip, can't go down becuase of the tree. We had the following stuff:
A chainsaw
A Land Rover with a winch
Two snatch straps and a pile of shackles
A Shovel, an axe and miscellaneous other stuff that takes actual skill/effort to use.

What we didn't have:
Refreshments.

We ended up winching the car sideways but I don't think that was the right thing to do.

2006-04-19T23:08:00.000-07:00

Bracksy's pooping lesson Part 2
Select all answers that apply.

2006-04-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the Pooping Lesson Bracksey.
The call has been heard in Spring Street that we've got a skills shortage. In another hysterical move, the state Labor government has seen fit to start in the area of greatest shortage - toilet skills. I would have given my right arm to be on the project that produced the poster pictured above. Can you imagine the giggling? Half of each project meeting would have been spent rolling on the floor. I'm guessing that the department responsible is hitting new lows of productivity with staff taking days off with split sides. My GST dollars went into producing this joke and I want to know more about it.

Let's assume firstly that this isn't just a government department running off the rails trying to hit its massive bureaucratic waste budget for the year and that there was an actual need to teach the citizens how to use a dunny. Are parents no longer doing their duty and raising functional toilet going citizens? Have people forgotten and just 'wing it', so to speak, when the find themselves in the cubicle? I need to hear from people who have found these posters useful. Are we de-evolving as a species? Or perhaps there's something more sinister happening...

Some time in 2005 Channel Ten aired a programe called Big Brother. The show was all about a bunch of young Aussie nobel prize laureates, hand-picked to highlight the paradox of our elite, well-educated population, and elegant social culture against our under-developed economy characterised by low-tech, low value export of primary agricultural and mining products... I can't remember it that well but it was a great show and the nation is justifiably proud of its youth. At one memorable point in the show some bloke with a name like 'Meatballs' (I think he was a surgeon) initiated a nefarious campaign of lavatory abuse through the introduction of the "Reverse Kanga" position. I'm sure you can look it up on the internet somewhere and I assure you it is unorthodox. The popularity of the TV show would have inspired many copy-cat campaigns in Australian society generally. I suspect this may have been the impetus behind Victorian department of human services counteracting such crimes against porcelain. But if this is the case why has the "Reverse Kanga" not been featured on the poster? Also how is a poster supposed to work against a criminal? I suspect it will be just about as effective as the tonnes of paper produced every year by the Defpartment of Foreign Affairs urging our citizens to not carry illegal drugs in South East Asia becuase the authorities there will execute. To stamp out this sort of bathroom atrocity we don't need posters, we need legislation! The message must be driven home to our legislators - shit, or get off the pot.

2006-04-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

2006-04-10T18:43:00.000-07:00

Opinion by Request on Global Warming.
Here's a glimpse of how much fun a carbon dioxide warmed planet will actually be. It's full of sand, sun and four-wheel-drives. Don't fear the greenhouse effect - embrace it. Too much emphasis is placed on downsides by fringe lobby groups who are deaf to the bitching and moaning by most people about how cold winter is. In fact every year people die of cold - global warming might just be the biggest lifesaver after penicilin, and it will save me the cost of earplugs.

It's about time those tree-huggers got consistent about carbon dioxide emissions. Either they stand in the pro-tree camp or they don't. If I was a tree I'd want several things so I can go on happily photosyntesizing and one of them is carbon dioxide - I'd (as a tree) be happier if there was more carbon dioxide in the air. Secondly I'd prefer to live in a nice comfortable greenhouse rather than the cold and scary outside world. So if you're a environmentalist in the pro-tree faction I urge you to reconsider your stance on Kyoto, carbon dioxide etc...

There shall be more on this topic...

2006-04-10T00:49:00.000-07:00

World debt holds steady at $0.00
And until we make contact with lenders from other planets... and them Martians offer an attractive debt consolidation package and long distance phone plan I figure it will stay that way. I just worked that one out, figure I'm pretty clever and I've just ripped off a headline from The Onion. Thanks Lindsay, this whole opinion by request thing might have some legs.

2006-04-06T16:43:00.000-07:00

Is Bagging 'Life Coaching' Too Easy?
If you purport to be a 'Life Coach' you probably wanted to be in modelling/acting/whatever but were too fat/ugly/untalented and by the time reality dawned, the sun had already set on your prospects of actually developing a useful skill - except, perhaps, your talent for spouting bullshit. The formative years spent stunting your abilities in rational analysis and reasoning in preparation for modelling/acting/whatever turn out to be a benefit when it comes to the 'profession' of 'life-coaching'. When people hand over actual cash to have someone act as a nosey mother-in-law, I feel like society is about to self destruct. What are they paying for? Amateur opinion/advice on subjects limited to the life coach's specialty of... everything? In-fact I don't know who I hold in greater contempt, the coach or the customer. I guess the good news is if you have no mates you can effectively buy one for $200 an hour.

2006-04-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

How to be a Downhill Legend
Step 1. Get someone to take a photo of you doing something average.

Step 2. Make it Steeper in photoshop - and remove any other evidence of averageness.

Step 3. Make it faster.

Let the world behold your legendariness.

2006-04-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

Is this what Defence minister Brendan Nelson meant when he said the Army doesn't compromise on equipment?
On display at the Formula 1 this weekend was "Armygeddon", a 6-wheel drive burnout machine loosely based on a standard Australian Army Land Rover Defender. Importantly it can achieve 24 combinations of burnout from it's six driven wheels. Cost $350,000. The look on Osama's face when the Aussies clean up in the burnout comp at the inaugural Kabul drags: priceless.

2006-03-28T23:12:00.000-08:00

Snowboards make my life better because I don't use them.

See how these two don't actually have both of their feet connected to the board? This makes for added value for those 'old school' skiing luddites like me who stick to two planks.

Let me explain: Each time these guys get on and off a ski lift they must unclip or re-clip (respectively) their feet to their snowboard - this takes a bit of awkward shuffling and reasonable amount of time. The latter is most important because the time spent stuffing around with bindings is not time spent on the actual slope. In an empirical exeriment on a short run I was able to fit in twice the number of runs because I didn't have to stuff around. Given that everybody pays the same price for lift tickets it means that snowboarders are subsidising skiers both in terms of slope time and number of runs, by as much as 50%. Everyone else should snowboard.

2006-03-28T17:41:00.000-08:00

Why am I paying for dropped mobile phone calls?
Probably about a third of the mobile phone calls I make get dropped at some point by the network during conversation. I swear, re-dial and complete the conversation. I have no doubt I am paying two flag-fall fees for the one conversation, and the telco has just profited by providing sub-standard service. I want my 20 cents back each time it happens. This arrangement actually encourages carriers to provide underprovisioned networks that routinely drop calls. I move that any reasonable length call that is dropped before either party hangs up should be free. Who's with me? This should hammer the Telstra share price in time for T3.

2006-03-27T18:23:00.000-08:00

The Bogan-Wanker Scale.
I have a steaming pile of philosophical questions that need answers. Inspired by the thinking behind www.politicalcompass.org I figure the world needs a new internet based test that determines where a candidate sits on the bogan-wanker scale. A candidate may then compare their boganity against celebrities and historical figures. The candidate may then print out a certificate... it'll be great. You'll see. How is the scale calibrated? Is the population normally distributed across the scale? is there a skew one way or the other? Is one's boganity intrinsic or acquired? Is the distribution of the population on the bogan-wanker scale in a country related to its Big Mac index? I think there might be a Dawkins university PhD in this. Start commenting now.

2006-03-23T17:22:00.000-08:00

Jim pats an invisible dog at Lake Louise

2006-03-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

My trailer got a propane heater.

2006-03-23T17:12:00.000-08:00

Ross gets airborne over Lake Louise. Someone pass me the anti-vertigo pills.

2006-03-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Ross appreciates the serenity. He has opinions.

2006-03-21T20:33:00.000-08:00

Banff has views.

Prior to going snowmobiling I feared Canada may have be suffering a bogan shortage. My fears were put to rest when the bloke in the foreground rolled his skidoo.

He gets 2 out of a possible 5 Khe Sanhs for his effort.

What should we have done?
	Been boring and winch the car sideways.
	Liberate Bruce's car by cutting the tree down with the chainsaw.
	Drive into town with the other car, buy explosives, remove the slope in front of Bruce's car.
	Let Bruce's tyres down and set them on fire and do 4WD burnouts because that would look cool
	Call the RACV/Jack Absolom/Alby Mangles/ Steve Irwin / Maj. Les Hiddens/MythBusters to get their advice
	Cry.
	All of the above - just to be sure.

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Bracksy's pooping lesson is:
	Of no use to me - I already know everything.
	Useful because I used to use the non-recommended techniques and couldn't work out why they were so messy.
	Confusing because it doesn't illustrate the technique I use everyday so I don't know whether it's good or bad.
	Unsatisfactory because the figures used aren't anatomically correct
	Useless because I can't read it whilst I'm squatting on the floor next to the dunny.
	Awseome because it has totally changed my life.
	Gutless because it doesn't take a stance on the "Reverse Kanga"

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Which of my opinions do you want to read about next?
	The benefits of public drunkenness.
	Sweeping problems under the carpet is a valid problem solving technique
	The major cause of skin cancer: sunscreen.
	Disorders that pharmaceutical companies will invent next.
	Mediocrity Vs Excellence: at home and in the workplace.
	Why everyone else should smoke.

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