">My Big World Of Crap

Go Aussies!  More evidence of how smart a country we are …. Australia has one of the highest rates in the world for Firefox usage.  Good to see 31% of us have ditched Internet Explorer and moved to a far superior browser.

Oceania (Australia and NZ basically) leads the world with 31%, followed by Europe 28%, North America 21% and the rest further behind.

Here is a map showing the levels of Firefox penetration by continent.

So whats with the 69% of Australians still using Internet Explorer …. get with the program people and change over to Firefox.  You won’t look back.  Do yourself a favour and download it.

An Air Canada flight from Toronto to London had to make an emergency landing in Ireland after a medical emergency … apparently the co-pilot suffered a breakdown, and had to be removed from the cockpit and restrained by other crew members.

According to a passenger:

“He was very, very distraught. He was yelling loudly at times,”

“He was swearing and asking for God and very distressed. He basically said he wanted to talk to God.”

I suppose  for someone wanting to talk to God, he was in the right place - well, 10,000 metres or so closer than if he’d been on the ground.

Seriously though, wouldn’t you shit yourself as a passenger had you seen this happen on your own flight?

How’s this for a big smackdown?  Victorian premier John Brumby, talking about the importance of the controversial Port Phillip Bay dredging project, said:

“If you want Melbourne to be a backwater, if you want Melbourne eventually to be an Adelaide - as someone described it the other day - well, don’t do this project, and Melbourne will just die a slow death.”

Naturally enough, South Australian premier Mike Rann didn’t appreciate this putdown.  He said:

“The Victorians are becoming more defensive because the centre of gravity for Australia’s economic future is now firmly based in states like West Australia, Queensland and South Australia.”

Hmmm, I think throwing in South Australia as a boom state like Western Australia and Queensland is overstating things a tad.

One thing Adelaide will always have though is its crown as serial killer capital of Australia!

…. you start seeing things like “Mould a Willy” kits in a gift shop in the middle of Westfield Belconnen Mall.  Not exactly hidden away either, it was on display in the front of the store, so no, I did not have to go purposefully looking for it down the back of the store.  And it wasn’t the first thing that attracted my attention as I walked past the shop.  Not really the sort of things I’d expect to see outside the porn emporiums of Fyshwick.

NSFW warning

To see what a “Mould a Willy” kit entails, go here.

Lightening has a thing on her blog called Smiley Saturday.   It is something just to lighten up the day and talk about something that makes you smile.  So I had a funny story, which we’d been having fun with today, so I thought I’d put it under the Smiley Saturday banner.

My (18 year old) daughter’s bedroom window at the front of our house had some shrubs in front of it.  She liked the fact that it gave her privacy, but didn’t like that it was blocking most of the light getting into her room.  So she decided today was the day to do some gardening.

Of course, smutty humour lovers that we are, that led to a day of puns about her “trimming her bush”, and whether the garden shears were suitable for that task.

Yep, pubes, sex, toilets, farts and all those things are hilarious to my family.  (To be honest its me and two teenagers … my wife is usually above the level of crassness some of us engage in.)

Today is Australia Day, the anniversary of the day the first white settlers from England landed in Sydney in 1788.

Inspired by this post in Aussie Bloggers  …. here is a photo of what I think is one of the most amazing places in Australia, Purnululu National Park in the Kimberly region of Western Australia.  Also known as the Bungle Bungles, this area was only really discovered by non-indigenous Australians around 30 or so years ago.

I was there in 2000.  Eight years ago.  I mean to go again some time.  It is truly an amazingly beautiful and spectacular place.

Had I not been so slack in scanning some of my pre digital camera photos, I would have got my act together and submitted something like this to the Aussie Bloggers post.

Two teenagers, 16-year-old and 14-year-old have been remanded in custody after being charged with numerous offences including break and enter, for looting houses that had been evacuated in the Queensland town of Emerald during the recent floods.

The police say the teenagers will be flown out of Emerald tonight because of widespread anger in the community.  Inspector Lyle Mitchell said:

“We will be taking measures and certainly one of those measures will be remanding in custody for their own personal safety to ensure their safety.”

“That might sound a bit soft but certainly there’s an obligation there to make sure that no harm comes to them.”

Yep, soft.  Chaining them to a lamp post in the main street for a few days would have been more appropriate.  With the flooding I’m sure there’s plenty of spoiled food around town, so plenty of rotten tomatoes and stuff to chuck at the little bastards.

Let this be a lesson to all suicide bombers.  Be careful where you tread - slips and trips are a hazard in the suicide bomber business, and workplace accidents can have deadly consequences.

A would-be suicide bomber fell down a flight of stairs and blew himself up as he headed out for an attack in Afghanistan, police say.

I can see the merits in using the local village idiot as a suicide bomber.  No point wasting more skilful and valuable resources on such missions.  However, evidently there is an intelligence threshhold below which the idiocy endangers the mission’s objectives.

Clearly the Taliban need to do some OH&S training for their insurgents.  After all, they don’t want their suicide bombers to die stupid accidental and pointless deaths.  (No, they want deliberate and pointless deaths).

We saw “Cloverfield” last night.   I liked it - even if I felt queasy in the stomach almost all the way through it.  And thats nothing to do with gore or violence or anything like that.  The gimmick of this movie is that its shot to look like a home movie shot on a home video camera.  The jerkiness and sudden cuts between scenes take some getting used to, and it feels like a bit of a rollercoaster ride.

Well worth seeing.

A bit of kite flying going on in the papers today, I think.  Some Labor Party figures, including cabinet Secretary John Faulkner, Foreign Affairs Minister Stephen Smith and Treasurer Wayne Swan, have been pushing for former leader Kim Beazley to be appointed Australia’s next
Governor-General.

Bad idea!  Appointing someone like Beazley (who, by the way , seems a decent and inoffensive man) justs shouts out loudly that the politics of patronage, of jobs for the boys, are alive and well in the new federal government.  Dumb move!  They need to make a clean break from the sort of low standards that the previous government set with political appointments to positions such as this (and diplomatic postings, etc).  These jobs should not be seen as rewards for good service to the party, or extra superannuation for long and faithful service.  They should be filled by the best person for the role.

Anyway, the idea didn’t last long in the public arena.  PM Kevin Rudd, has already ruled it out.

“When we turn our minds to this, the next Governor-General of Australia will not be a former or serving politician, conservative or Labor,” :

“And the reason being is I believe it’s an office which is often best discharged by someone from the broader community.”

Now I’m sure the government never really had any intention of appointing Kim as GG …. seems like someone’s been running the flag up the pole to see if who salutes.

I expect  the government would really want to appoint a woman Governor-General … a first for Australia, and a stamp on our history that I’m sure many in government would like to be responsible for.  Any ideas who the strongest candidates might be?

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I know, I know - I said I didn’t intend to say any more about Corey Delaney (Worthington?).

His parents released an open letter defending their son.  Its actually quite a balanced letter, saying that their son is a decent, kind and family oriented boy, but he screwed up with his party last weekend and that his acting like a complete tool ever since hasn’t helped.  His mother has said:

“He’s devastated. He’s taken this and run with it but he has come back down to earth with a big thud,”

and

“He’s come a big gutser and he’s a bit sore and sorry for himself.”

Of course, we had to get the “butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth” photo to help us empathise with him and his parents.

GPS units are apparently a popular target of thieves now.  Police say GPS devices are an easy bit of hardware to off-load at pawn shops.

Liverpool local area commander Detective Superintendent Mick Plotecki said GPS thefts were a big problem in his area.

“You wouldn’t leave $500 in your car so I don’t know why people leave these things in their cars,” he said.

Vehicle owners who tried to out-smart thieves by hiding their GPS unit in the glove box or under the seat were fighting a losing battle, Superintendent Plotecki said.

“We are finding that the thieves just look for the suction marks on the window where it has been stuck up. So even though they can’t see the GPS unit, they know it is somewhere inside the car.”

His remedy?  Stick to an old-fashioned street directory.  Now that just sounds like conceding defeat to the lowlife scum who steal the things … ie we can’t stop them, so its your fault for putting these things in your car to tempt them.  What about actually catching the bastards, prosecuting them and sticking them in jail?  Can’t steal stuff from cars then.

Likewise, the solution to people stealing a tank of petrol at service stations by driving off without paying is to inconvenience the 99% of people who don’t do this, by making us prepay - ie figure out what we need, pay for it and then go back to the pump and fill the car.  Superintendent Plotecki said a prepaid system introduced at 24 petrol stations in his area command had reduced petrol theft by more than 90 per cent in the past year.  What a triumph of effective policing … no doubt Supt Plotecki has this as a KPI (and he or some other police commander has pay incentives riding on it) …big achievement, reduce crime by hassling everyone, rather than catching the thieving swine who are the problem, and removing them from the community.

So, message to police, and their political masters … I understand that preventative precautions are a good thing in most situations, but do not think they are the solution.  Rather than make things tougher for the normal people in the community to make it harder for the scum to do their dirty work, put more effort into cracking down on the pricks - make their lives impossible.