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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?