As reminded by lillim, today is White Ribbon Day. See her previous post for some background and links. She also posted a link to an opinion piece by Andrew O'Keefe about it.

And something I stumbled upon serendipitously that is germane to the topic -
opposite world and "Rule of thumb".

Via greylock and patchworkkid: Wierd?

ROFLMAO @ today's DorkTower -

sithmagician and I watched Robert Newman's History of Oil last night, and discussing it and the topics in a couple of other videos we plan to watch over the weekend - "The Age of Stupid", "Food Inc" and "Zeitgiest" - the conversation turned to the fall of the Berlin Wall, amongst other things.

Today, sithmagician sent me this link, remarking on the spooky timing. I certainly hadn't realised that we were coming up on the 20th anniversary.

As I remarked to sithmagician last night, for those of us who lived with the cold war all our lives and were old enough to understand the significance of the fall of the Berlin wall, those couple of years were extraordinary ones. We had The Fall, the collapse of Soviet Russia and the freeing of eastern Europe, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. We even had long-running problems like Northern Ireland and yes, even Palestine, taking some tentative steps towards resolution. For the first time in a very, very long time, it looked like humanity was actually heading in the right direction, together, and that we just might be getting it right for a change. There was hope. I cried the night the Berlin Wall came down.

And then, just one short year after The Fall, the first Gulf War started. And it seemed then, as it still seems now, that that conflict killed the fledgling hope that the events of the previous years had created, and it had dragged humanity back about 30 years, to the tensions at the height of the cold war. It seems that America just cannot function without an external enemy that it can never hope to beat. I cried again when that conflict started.

As sent to me in an email ...


Ever wonder why you pay professionals less than business or sales guys:


Dilbert's 'Salary Theorem' states that 'Engineers and scientists can never
earn as much as business executives and sales people.' This theorem can
now be supported by mathematical proof based on the following two postulates:

Postulate 1:
Knowledge = Power

Postulate 2:
Time = money

As every engineer knows:
Power = Work / Time.

Since Knowledge = Power, then Knowledge = Work/Time. Since Time = Money,

then Knowledge = Work/Money.

Solving for Money, we get Money = Work / Knowledge.
Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity,
regardless of the amount of work done.

ROFLMAO!!! After this morning's weird weather, the Dictionary.com Word of the Day for today is "eldritch", meaning "unearthly; weird; eerie". How appropriate :)

So, for those not on my Facebook, ( this was the view from my window this morning: )

Sydney was hit by a freak dust storm blown in from the west of the state in the early hours of the morning.

So I was woken up at 6 this morning because I was choking on the dust as I'd left my window open a bit last night. And the sky was just blood-red. The photos really don't do it justice. I was a bit worried about coming in to work because of the wind (predicted to hit gusts of 100km an hour, and the wind gets gusty on the bridge at the best of times) and because the dust was making me wheeze. But after taking some of my asthma meds I ventured out. The bike was covered in dust because I forgot to cover her last night, and I wiped that off but I needn't have bothered, she'll be filthy again by tonight. I must have lucked out because the wind was not too bad on the bridge, a couple of hairy moments, but not worse than I've dealt with previously. Riding in the lee of a train that was conveniently crossing at the same time I was probably helped too :) I'm actually glad I came in to work because the air quality is actually better here than at home because of the air con filters, which was what I was hoping for. I am beginning to smell the dust again, though, so maybe they are at saturation point already. Every outdoor surface is covered in dust, and all of my riding gear is now covered in a layer of orange dust too. Its been a weird and eerie morning.

Firstly hat-tip to thorfinn and others for this article on Managing Geeks. It's so very, very true.

Also, the last-but-one XKCD had me in stitches -



Heh, a plot-hole you could drive a mac truck through. I bet OSC hates the internet now, not least because all of us left-wing types who demand things like equality and respect and don't bow down in immediate adoration at his insane, homophobic ranting as he clearly expected to happen :)

It even pays homage to the squirrel.

So sithmagician and I went on a road trip to Canberra this weekend. Some of you will have been following sithmagician's as-it-happened twitter stream, this is the redux version from my POV.

We started out Friday afternoon and headed down the Hume Highway, where I couldn't help but laugh at sithmagician's Perth-tinged pronunciation of the names of some of the places we passed. Perth really is a world apart :P We stopped at Goulburn for coffee and got stared at by the locals, including a bunch of MallGoths/EmoKids (whom sithmagician dubbed "FlannieGoths"), who positively glared at us. We were probably the first real Goths they'd ever seen in the flesh, LOL. We arrived at my friend Tim's place in good time where we then spent the evening relaxing and sithmagician and Tim getting to know each other.

Saturday sithmagician and I spent visiting Questacon and the War Memorial. I'll let sithmagician wax lyrical about these, as I'm not very good at that :) I'll comment that driving in Canberra is ... an interesting experience. By the time we'd finished at the War Memorial, I was beginning to flag so we stopped to pick up some snacks for pre-club drinks, got lost getting out of the carpark, righted ourselves, got lost trying to go around the "small ring" road around Parliament House and ended up driving right up to it. Oh well, sithmagician wanted to see it anyway. Unfortunately, I was too fatigued at this stage to see if slowlight was available for a coffee and catch-up as I'd planned, and needed to go have a rest if I was going to be able to make it Chrome.

So, after a bit of a rest and pre-club drinks we headed off to Chrome, where much fun was had. There were a couple of people from Sydney there, but we also met a whole bunch of very friendly Canberrans. Lots of talking, some dancing, and I even whipped dj_voodoo's arse at pool. We stayed 'til closing, then went back to Tim's where we continued drinking and talking until we realised that the sun was well up and that I at least should try to get some sleep if I was going to be able to drive back.

Sunday was a complete write-off due to a couple of poor decisions the night before, and none of our battle plans survived contact with the enemy. We didn't make it to the brunch that we'd been invited to with dj_voodoo and some Canberrans, and we didn't leave until much later than I'd planned to as we had to wait until I was in a fit state to drive. We were very, very glad when we finally got home. But it was a great trip despite all that and one that we'll have to do again some time.

Thanks to all the Canberrans that helped us have such a great time at Chrome, and thanks especially to Tim who was an absolutely terrific host.

Not-quite-useless fact for the day - according to this article at The Straight Dope, mosquitoes prefer type O blood to type A or B.

This would explain why I (type O) would get eaten alive, while N (type A) sleeping right next to me would emerge without a single bite :(

From this I could also hazard a guess the K has type O blood and R has type A.

A fun little quiz here from the Philosopher's Magazine, which tests whether your religious beliefs (or, as in my case, lack of them) are internally consistent.

Battleground Analysis
Congratulations!

You have been awarded the TPM medal of honour! This is our highest award for outstanding service on the intellectual battleground.

The fact that you progressed through this activity neither being hit nor biting a bullet suggests that your beliefs about God are internally consistent and very well thought out.

A direct hit would have occurred had you answered in a way that implied a logical contradiction. You would have bitten bullets had you responded in ways that required that you held views that most people would have found strange, incredible or unpalatable. However, you avoided both these fates - and in doing so qualify for our highest award. A fine achievement!

How did you do compared to other people?

* 454123 people have completed this activity to date.
* You suffered zero direct hits and bit zero bullets.
* This compares with the average player of this activity to date who takes 1.39 hits and bites 1.10 bullets.
* 7.79% of the people who have completed this activity, like you, emerged unscathed with the TPM Medal of Honour.
* 45.72% of the people who have completed this activity took very little damage and were awarded the TPM Medal of Distinction.

Reposted from today's XKCD (http://xkcd.com/627/)

I'm going to print out a bunch of copies right now :)

Programmer Jokes. I think I just ruptured something.

Number 420 is a generic geeky one that should amuse a few people on my F-list, and I point sebthecat in the direction of number 286 :P

Edit: Oh $DEITY, I just noticed how many pages that thing goes for. You may never see me again.

And I just read this one -

"Female software engineers become sexually irresistible at the age of consent, and remain that way until about thirty minutes after clinical death. Longer if it's a warm day.

[Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert]"

Damn straight! :)

Let it never be said that romance is dead
'Cos there’s so little else occupying my head
There is nothing I need, 'cept the function to breathe
But I’m not really fussed doesn’t matter to me ...

*contented sigh*

Hillsong have backed out of that stupid mega-church they were trying to push at Rosebery
http://sydney-central.whereilive.com.au/news/story/hillsong-gives-up-on-sydney-mega-church-site/
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/hillsong-backs-down-over-rosebery-office/2008/07/02/1214950851284.html

Whoohoo!! *happy dance*

I hate to sound like one of the tin-foil hat brigade, but does this so-called "terror plot" that was recently "foiled" just sound way too fucking ... neat to anyone else? You know, the whole "muslims under the bed" thing had begun to lose its sting, the GFC is not hitting as hard as people had predicted, and the country needed a good old-fashioned injection of fear to justify the continuance of all those extraordinary powers law enforcement agencies were previously given. I mean, does this whole thing not smack of a V For Vendetta like plotline?

Anyone know what Trejkaz's Jabber account and/or email address is? My Jabber account got borked and I lost all my contacts.

So what are people doing on Saturday night now that Love & Hatred has been cancelled? What's on around the place?

http://www.censordyne.com.au/ - the latest campaign from GetUp! to fight the mandatory internet filter. Funny and informative, they've done a great job.