The one thing I hate about changing jobs is handing over my stuff to the person taking on my old job. Its the time when I’ve got to clean up all those little crappy tasks that I’ve successfully avoided doing, get my barely existent filing system into some sort of shape where someone other than me can figure out where things are, and write notes and instructions on how I do various things (tasks that are so familiar to me now that I just do them without having to think about it).
Tensions mount once again between Israel and Palestine, this time over the capture of an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, and now the execution by Palestinian extremists of a young Israeli settler, Eliahu Asheri, and this has the potential to escalate significantly.
What is it that the Palestinian militants think they are going to achieve by their campaigns of violence and kidnapping? I’ve got a message for them – Israel is not going away, so you guys need to come to terms with that and reach some sort of mutually acceptable compromise. Continuing with terrorism is like bashing your heads against a brick wall, and isn’t going to achieve anything, except retaliation from Israel which is inevitably going to do more harm to the Palestinian people than Hamas, Hezbollah and the like can ever do to Israel. Sure, killing a few Israelis may make the militants and their supporters feel good, but its not going to make Israel go away and leave the Middle East. In fact, if push comes to shove, Israel is the one with the capability to bomb Palestine, Syria and the like into the Stone Age.
Technorati Tags: Palestine, Israel, Middle East, Gilad Shalit, Hamas, Hezbollah, terrorism
How could someone do something like killing an 8 year old girl he picked up at random? Thats what happened to Sofia Rodrigez-Urrutia-Shu on Monday this week in Perth.
A couple of interesting things have emerged since Dante Wyndham Arthurs was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting and murdering Sofia. First, his home has been attacked by vigilantes – I can understand the strong feelings a crime like this generates in people, but attacking his property (actually his parents’ house) is pretty pointless. Second, authorities have had to quash rumours that Arthurs was in fact one of the two boys who abducted and murdered James Bulger in England in 1993. Those boys, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, were given new identities and relocated upon their release from prison, and there has previously been speculation that one was in Australia. Now, we have his lawyers claiming all the publicity surrounding the case will deny Dante Arthurs a fair trial.
If there was a case for capital punishment in Australia, a crime like this would surely be a strong candidate for the perpetrator to be subject to the death penalty – much to be said for eradicating the scum who do this sort of thing from the face of the earth. I suspect that he will get it via unofficial channels in prison at some stage.
Technorati Tags: Sofia Rodrigez-Urrutia-Shu. murder, Perth, Canning Vale, Dante Wyndham Arthurs, paedophile, child rape, death penalty, capital punishment
Leave photos of your rude bits on the windscreen of their cars. Interesting idea, wonder what the success rate is? The genius who tried this is one Craig Andrew Collins of Launceston in Tasmania. Now I could make some remarks about how he was actually leaving them on his sisters’ cars parked in the driveway at home, but I won’t go there for now.
Technorati Tags: Stalking women, penis photos, Tasmania
off!
The penalty in the last few seconds of the Australia vs Italy game was nothing but a joke. Once again, soccer makes a mockery of itself, with the Italian diving team getting the reward for its efforts. Shit penalty, even shitter referee. If FIFA is fair dinkum, the Italian diver will get suspended for the rest of the tournament – but that won’t happen, because FIFA is itself a joke.
The Spanish referee should never be appointed to an international level game again – he fell for the dive, gullible idiot.
Hopefully, Italy will go no further in this tournament. They don’t deserve to, having won by cheating.
On the other hand, once again, Australia showed its usual inability to capitalise on opportunities. How often do they dominate large chunks of a game, but just can’t score? Had they been good enough they could have scored and not been exposed to the risk of a dodgy penalty.
Technorati Tags: Italy, Australia, soccer, football, FIFA, World Cup, diving, incompetent referee, cheating
I’m back from New York … its a long way. Left Friday night, and got home Sunday afternoon (should have been Sunday morning, but the plane from JFK airport was about 3 hours late on Friday – according to the pilot, this was because of fog in Sydney and eastern Australia on Thursday/Friday).
I felt surprisingly un-tired until about 4 pm this afternoon. Much less so than on shorter trips I’ve done in the past.
Hopefully I’ll get back to New York again in a couple of months time … then I’m going to go a couple of days earlier and hopefully have about 3 days to
look around, rather than the single day this time.
I did something on Friday I hadn’t intended to do. Drive on the wrong (right) side of the road. Its weird, and you really have to concentrate hard on it, as it goes against all my driving instincts from home.
Ewwwww! Poor dog. That guy is seriously ugly.
Technorati Tags: man having sex with dog, bestiality
It does me.
Court cases where the defendant claims mitigation because they were pissed, or stoned, or off their face for some reason, or had a bad childhood or something.
In this case, where the victim was stabbed by a 17 year old youth, the youth’s lawyer said he had been “extremely,extremely intoxicated” on the night, as if this is some sort of defence for randomly stabbing some guy who just happened to cross his path. Well, too bad, so sad. If you can’t drink without getting angry and violent there is an easy solution – don’t drink, fuckwit! Also, I reckon anyone who carries a knife in public should get a couple of years gaol just for that, and if they commit crimes with it, thats just the flagfall on their sentence. I note the maximum sentence for the youth’s offence is 10 years gaol …. bet you he gets nothing like that though, probably a year or so.
Then we have this case where a woman smashed a beer glass in another woman’s face, leaving her blind in one eye. Her lawyer argued her client had consumed a lot of alcohol on the night, plus was an orphan, and then went for the hat trick, saying she had been abused when she was young. OK, maybe unfortunate, but no excuse for getting violent – if she can’t handle it, don’t drink. The offender, Tyneal Louise Jenkins, got 5 years for this. (by the way, Tyneal …..bogan alert!!!!).
At least over here in the US, we get the World Cup soccer at a sensible time, like 3pm. Thanks to wireless networks and web coverage of the game between Australia and Croatia, the Australians in our meeting today were all following the game. The Poms with us did likewise a couple of days ago. The Americans were vaguely interested in the main, but not on the bandwagon as much as us Aussies and the Europeans.
2-2 draw, a good enough result to get Australia through to the last 16 in the tournament. This is completely new territory for the team.
Finally made it to New York last night, after roughly 24 hours in transit – left early Sunday Canberra time, got here about 7 pm Sunday New York time, feeling really tired. But not enough to go for a walk round Times Square to grab some food and do a bit of the tourist thing – but not interested in going for some drinks with my work colleagues who’d been here a day longer than me.
Today, we worked hard. Statue of Liberty, Central Park, some lunch at a deli. However thats all the sightseeing we get, the rest of the week is work, work,work. Must say the Statue of Liberty up close is very impressive – its one of those icons that just has a special feeling about it. In Australia, going to Uluru did the same for me … just a really special place.
A few thoughts on New York:
Funniest thing seen today – two young girls sitting a few rows in front of us on the Statue of Liberty ferry. First noticed them wearing short croptops and lowish hanging jeans, in particular the rolls hanging out between the two items of clothing (never an attractive sight), but when they sat down, we got a view of several inches of buttcrack, then couple of inches of undies then finally got to the top of the jeans.