Journal Entries
Money Makes The World Go Around
Posted Dec 8, 2008
Mr Kevin Rudd is giving us some loot this week. He is calling it a "massive fiscal stimulus package" which to me sounds more like an excruciating medical procedure using a bunched hand. Anyway, the idea is that we need to spend spend spend for Australia. Some of Mr Rudd's detractors argue from a platform which holds that we're too bogan to me trusted with the budget surplus and that we'll waste it all on booze and pokies, instead of at (for example) Harvey Norman.
The wisdom of such wide-scale federal profligacy and the sustainability of relentless economic growth aside, those detractors are wrong. Local clubs/pubs like the Sports Club or the RSL are at the social hearts of many of our communities. Money dispensed into gaming machines funds props up our grass roots sporting endeavour while most of our beer is locally made. The cash stays inside Australia. If we spend as seems to be intended on iPods and TV screens the size of the flight deck on a Nimitz Class carrier, all our (it was never yours Mr Costello!) hard-earned surplus goes off shore.
Make poverty history ...
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Latest reply: Dec 8, 2008
Men's Health
Posted Dec 5, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7765767.stm
But what is larger?
Discuss this Journal entry [2]
Latest reply: Dec 5, 2008
World Cup Final
Posted Nov 22, 2008
They don't come around very often. I shall be among the mungo faithful at Suncorp tonight.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_league/7741726.stm
Hopefully we don't get blown/washed away ...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/11/22/2427015.htm
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Latest reply: Nov 22, 2008
England ...
Posted Nov 16, 2008
... had a solid weekend of plucky underachievement:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/shared/fds/hi/statistics/cricket/scorecards/2008/11/15320/html/scorecard.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/7727059.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_union/english/7728562.stm
Discuss this Journal entry [15]
Latest reply: Nov 16, 2008
Event Horizon
Posted Oct 13, 2008
We think you have a tenuous grasp of the concept of the butterfly effect, if not the raw physics. Put simply, a little old lady withdraws her pension from an account in Cheam and brings down Morgan Freeman. Chaos to you. But to the external observer perfectly predictable given the exact and known value of all influential variables.
Only in this case there was no butterfly flapping its wings in the Andean foothills. And the little old lady was as apocryphal as Mrs O'Leary's cow or Isaac Newton's free-falling apple.
Instead, in Switzerland, we had a thitherto unprecedented collection of the world's geekiest geeks assembled together accelerating protons around an electromagnetic tube with a view to recreating the conditions when the universe began. And as sure as Earth is the third rock from the Sun, big bangs generate uncertainty. Lack of confidence follows.
The timelines are eerily coincident. The collider came on line on 10 September 2008. Five days later, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. And now we prepare to witness meltdown in Iceland. Icelandic insolvency will precipitate collapse of the British High Street, West Ham United and Gordon f*c*i*g Ramsay – the end of civilization as we know it.
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Latest reply: Oct 13, 2008
Trout Montague
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