The Sydney Morning Herald is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the southern hemisphere. It is the Sydney equivalent of The Age, which I have already written about.
So what sort of cutting edge journalism are they dishing out? How about this article, published online in May, detailing all kinds of useful tricks to steal from or defraud hotels. After all, hotels are made of money. They can afford to have people steal from them.
Who knows how to do the Heimlich manoeuvre? You’ve probably seen it hundreds of times in movies and on TVs. It’s a great thing you know, if you would rather cause internal injuries than actually help someone.
The manoeuvre has long since been superseded by another process that won’t leave grandma with a crushed liver and ruptured spleen (in the unlikely event she survives).
So what do you do if someone is choking?
Coles supermarkets apparently have a promotion going called “Dollar dazzlers”.
Here are their dollar dazzler products:
I apologise for the fuzziness of the photo, but every single one of those products is two dollars. How is it a “dollar” (singular) dazzler if the products cost more than a dollar?
Have you ever used a unisex toilet? I used one for the first time today.
But why is it called a “unisex” toilet? Wouldn’t a male or female only toilet be unisex, since it only allows one sex? I am inclined to think I used a misnamed bisex toilet…
Travelling overseas? There are a million books and websites filled with an amazing range of travel tips,but I want to share the one thing I’ve discovered that is not in the books:
Carry a ukulele.
A ukulele is one of the easiest instruments to learn, and it is incredibly portable. You can get a cheap Mahalo brand for less than $30. It is one of the few instruments that is so cheap that will still sound good. It sounds even better if you throw on some Aquila strings (about $20).
Why travel with a ukulele?
So there you have it, take a ukulele when you travel.
For the last and best word on ukuleles, let’s ask Amanda Palmer.
One Nation, the back-country bogan’s favourite political party, is back!
Unfortunately, they may not quite be ready. Stephanie Banister has put her foot in her mouth a little at this interview.
She says that Channel 7 used fancy editing to make her look like an idiot. And I have no doubts that a commercial news network would twist a quote or two around to spice up a story. But you can’t exactly Photoshop a Mona Lisa from a stick figure – you need something to work with.
The worst part about her racism is how uneducated it is. If you are going to:
a) be passionate about something (such as racism, GLBTQI rights, religion, the role of the nobility in agrarian cultural revolution); and
b) proselytise your views
then you have a responsibility to at least do some basic research first! It’s one thing to be a racist because you aren’t sure why but your dad always hated those bloody foreign bastards and everyone knows the abos are just a bunch of drunks who don’t want to work and those curry munchers are taking all the good jobs away from Aussies. Ignorance like that is sad, but at least you are keeping it mostly to yourself.
But to stand up in front of a nation and try and convince people to hold a view that you clearly don’t understand? Priceless! Do you know how many times I have been on TV trying to convince people that Australia should introduce a Keynesian economic system? None. And not because no TV show will have me (though they won’t), but because I have no idea what a Keynesian economic system is. In fact, we might already have one. Maybe we are getting one in 2016?
In a way idiocy like Ms Banister’s could be seen as a positive thing, because it highlights how ridiculous racism actually is. Let’s hope a few racists hear how stupid they sound and start to rethink their own views. At the very least, she has given us all the opportunity for a good laugh (albeit with mildly uncomfortable undertones).
The Australian Government’s recent announcement that it will send all “boat people” (i.e. refugees/asylum seekers that attempt to come to Australia by boat) to Papua New Guinea and not allow them to ever enter Australia has caused widespread controversy. The main argument against this policy is that it is not exactly a compassionate way to deal with asylum seekers (who, let’s not forget, are fleeing all kinds of awful horrors). Today I’m going to play devil’s advocate and ask: is it such a bad idea?
Note: for the purpose of this blog, let’s pretend that there is no political motivation behind the solution.
I was watching TV the other night, and a government representative was defending the policy on the grounds that it will stop people smugglers. The argument is that if asylum seekers know that attempts to come to Australia via people smugglers will just see them abandoned in PNG, they will choose not to use the people smugglers.
From a purely pragmatic point of view, is this so bad? People smugglers are nasty criminals who take advantage of people’s desperation, and I think we can all agree that they should be stopped. But basic economics says that as long as there is demand, there will always be supply. How do you get rid of demand? Achieving world peace is apparently quite tricky, so the tactic seems to be to convince asylum seekers that life will be just as bad if they come to Australia via boat. The best case scenario is that an initial batch of people get sent straight to PNG and have a pretty miserable time, but in the long run less people drown at sea and we get rid of most of the people smugglers.
There is a logic to that argument. If all assumptions are in your favour, it ends up with a better result for people in general, at the cost of some extra suffering for a small few. Would you kill one innocent person to save 20 people’s lives?
Of course, this is a best case scenario depending on a lot of assumptions. If life in PNG is still better than whatever hell these poor people are fleeing from then it won’t achieve anything except some nice under-the-rug-brushing for our politicians.
So will this policy stop people smugglers? Or will we just cause a bunch of extra misery for some people who have already gone through all kinds of suffering? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!
In my quest to encourage good, toilet-related hygiene, I have previously posted about splashback, the floor, the age-old up versus down seat debate, and seat contact prevention.
Today I will be discussing hand-washing. People wash their hands with varying degrees of thoroughness; from not washing all, to the old rinse ‘n’ dry, to a proper soap job. Always do the latter. Unwashed hands in a toilet spread dysentry, cholera, and food poisoning, among others. Remember: it doesn’t matter what you did in the toilet area, even if you just popped in to adjust your tie, if you touch anything WASH YOUR HANDS.
Hygiene does not finish with washing the hands though. You must also adhere to the post-wash protocol. Once you have washed your hands thoroughly, you may not touch anything in that room, except paper hand towels or toilet paper that was not exposed before you entered the room. Everything else in that room is Contaminated.
The two things you are most likely going to need to touch after you have washed your hands are also the most likely to be crawling with Contaminants. The first is the tap. This is the first thing that hand-washer’s touch after finishing their business, and is thus going to have all manner of Contaminants on it. The second is the door handle. For those foul disgusting pigs who do not wash, this is the first thing touched, and will also have all manner of Contaminants.
Once your hands are clean, use a barrier preventative to protect them from contacting the filth. Paper towels will do if nothing else is present. Wash; dry; turn off tap with paper towel; exit room, using paper towel to open door.
Bonus tip: If no barrier protection is available, grasp the door handle or tap in an unusual place, one that is unlikely to have been grasped by the Contaminated hands of the Unclean. These people are Unclean because they are lazy, so their handle-grabbing will always follow the path of least resistance.
I discovered this article (NSFW – there is a picture with half a nipple showing) by the Daily Mail about an incident in which part of artist/songwriter/musician Amanda Palmer’s breast was accidentally visible during a recent show.
The article is a pathetic piece of rubbish, and I’m not surprised the author hid behind the nom de honte “DAILY MAIL REPORTER”. For one thing, Ms Palmer has never been ashamed of her body and is more than happy to flaunt it to whomever is interested. I’m not sure she would be any more embarrassed by a brief nipple slip than I would be by an untied shoelace (for example, see her NSFW response to the article).
But I’m going to ignore on that, and focus on this little nugget printed towards the end of the text portion of the article. The pre-ante-penultimate sentence begins, “The bi-sexual singer also wore a pair of…”
So, why mention that she is bisexual? I looked at a bunch of other articles from the US Showbiz section of their website, and none of them mentioned the sexuality of the person being written about (note: although that last one about Jillian Michaels mentions her same-sex partner, they don’t go to the trouble of enlightening us as to whether she is lesbian or bisexual). Even this article, which refers to the fact that Darren Criss is playing an openly gay character (in which mention of Mr Criss’ sexuality may at least be justified in the context of the acting challenge involved in a straight person playing a gay person), doesn’t say word one about his sexuality.
So why this bolt from the blue, bearing such a burning bulletin of ballsy bisexuality?
Bigotry.
Look at those crazy bisexuals and the whacky things they do!
Their customs are different from us!
We should mock them and revel with glee at their embarrassment when their silliness backfires!
They didn’t mention where she gew up. They didn’t mention where she went to college. They didn’t mention what her parents were like. They didn’t even mention the fact that she is married. Amanda’s sexuality does not define her. Like all of these things, and more, it is just one part of who she is. Yet when pointing out all of her crazy antics and hi-jinks, the authore chose to remind everyone of that particular fact. Way to encourage bigotry and reinforce negative stereotypes, Daily Mail!
My wallet is starting to fall apart, so I went to Myers at Southland today to buy a new one. I am vegetarian, for ethical reasons, so I asked one of the staff if they had any that were not made of leather. Her response was, and I quote, “We only have leather here. Have you tried a $2 shop?”
Wow, of all the snobby, snooty things to say to a customer! Apparently the true measure of class is not how you dress, but how many animals you kill. Well, screw you Myer, I will never buy from you again. Maybe you should consider teaching your customer sevice staff to be friendly and helpful instead of entitled and judgemental.
Shouting at the Clouds 