I just about punched the air when I read Elliot Fishman’s great opinion piece in today’s Age: RACV heading down the wrong road. Elliot highlights some of the things I’ve pondered recently, such as the RACV’s 2004 spectacularly wrong guess on oil prices, as well as pointing out the flaws in their calls for lower ... [More]
Glad it wasn’t me that this happened to. One can understand the frustration which gets people taking flying kicks at the machine, trying to rock it on its base to get the purchase out.
On Thursday some school books were lost by Son The Elder. On Friday he checked with his home group teacher. He checked with the year level co-ordinator and the office. Following the long weekend, he checked again on Tuesday after school. Nothing had turned up. He seemed worried about the missing books, so I moved ... [More]
While one can see that developing hybrid Camrys is going to be of some benefit, with reduced petrol consumption and therefore reduced emissions, I think we need to get a little perspective here. What they’re saying is that the hybrid Camry will reduce consumption by about a third. That’s certainly a start, putting it below ... [More]
Brian K posted about different types of people and their behaviour at pedestrian lights: those who don’t press it, then look confused when nothing happens; those who press it once; those who rapid-fire press it dozens of times, in the mistaken belief that it makes the lights change quicker. (Ah. It seems I’ve written about ... [More]
I’m not really familiar with the work of Bill Henson. I’m more familiar with Jim Henson. But I do know this: Nudity is not necessarily sexuality. Context is critical. Which is why Mal Day’s comments on Lateline were so stupid: If I was to take those – take similar photos and display ’em in any ... [More]
My sister and her family are moving from gentrified East Brighton to the wilds of Cheltenham. They bought a house there on a huge block of land, with a pool in the backyard. They don’t expect to keep the pool (what, in this day and age, and with Waves about 5 minutes’ walk away?) but ... [More]
An email went around noting that today is World Environment Day, and it provided a list of tips for reducing your impact on the planet. It made for some interesting reading. Turn down the heat – reducing the thermostat by 1 degree can save 5 – 10% of energy When I use the heat, I ... [More]
Having never been a clubbing-type disco person, I don’t pretend to know enough about the CBD club 2am lockout to know if it’ll work in reducing alcohol abuse and street violence. But I do know that protesters seem to be making out that it means every night at 2am, people will be kicked out onto ... [More]
There was some discussion on this recently in the comments, and now it’s become reality: From tomorrow, most Australian credit cards will offer you the choice of using the PIN instead of signing, at most shops. Details on the Pen Or Pin web site. Wouldn’t surprise me if it had been pushed by those retailers ... [More]
Amusing sight the other morning: a group of tourists lining up along a tram stop platform in Flinders Street to take photos of a passing fire engine, zooming by with lights and sirens blaring. Sorry, I didn’t get a pic of them. I admit, I’ve done similar in foreign cities. It’s what’s different about every ... [More]
Something I remember my driving instructor telling me all those years ago was that mounting the kerb was a big no-no during a driving test. It would result in instant failure. It sticks in my mind, particularly when I see something like this: This was the second attempt at parking for this guy. I watched ... [More]
Just following-up the post the other day about high fuel prices, more than anything, hopefully forcing action on public transport. TonyH pointed me to this excellent article by George Monboit, who notes that so far there is no such action, and that high fuel prices are in fact the biggest thing currently helping to reducing ... [More]
Public transport is by its very nature a social experience. Which probably explains the number of Overheard in Melbourne posts from PT. It’s not all people with noisy phone ringtones, those with annoyingly sniffly noses, and raucous teenagers. These are the people I’ve randomly run into on the train/tram/at stations in the last couple of ... [More]
Sometimes I’m up late. Sometimes it’s close to midnight. And sometimes, I decide to stay up just that little bit longer, to midnight, to check tomorrow’s newspaper. Because The Age usually pushes its new stories onto their web site at midnight. The front page may not be updated, but the National news page is. I ... [More]