Melt your lies away

If the people at Channel Nine's A Current Affair had brains I'm sure they'd explode at the sheer hypocrisy of doing a damning exposé on a shonky 'slimming coffee'. This from a programme that regularly touts 'miracle' cures for obesity and cellulite.

The 'slimming coffee' on tonight's programme appeared to consist of a mixture of cheap instant coffee, guar gum, chromium and some kind of acid. ACA, being the super-sleuths they are, decided to seize upon a single statement that guar gum, a food additive in countless products on Australian supermarket shelves, is unsafe, all but ignoring the potentially toxic chromium in the product, simply dismissing it as 'ineffective'. I don't know how much guar gum a person would have to consume to be considered unsafe, but it would have to be a heck of a lot. I've certainly never seen anything to suggest that is anything less than safe.

I'd also like to know why they choose to talk to a credible academic in the field of Public Health when they're doing an exposé but not when they're relentlessly touting an equally dodgy product.

So what makes the difference between the shonky weight-loss products Channel Nine promotes and the shonky weight-loss products Channel Nine condemns?

Jihad Peter? Jihad Paul?

Jack Thomas
Photo: Jason South

Whatever would The Australian have done if Jack Thomas ('Jihad Jack') had been called Peter... or Neil, or Terrence?

I suspect that without the nice headline-ready alliteration presented by the bushranger-remniscent 'Jihad Jack', Thomas's stature as a terrorist of major importance would suddenly be dramatically diminished.

Lauding LaPaglia

Anthony LaPaglia is a bit of a legend as far as famous Australians go, I reckon. He may have lost his Aussie accent, but it's pretty evident that he has a passion for Australian football and has really put his money where his mouth is in terms of raising the sport's profile, with his part ownership of A-League team Sydney FC, and now his involvement in the new International Goalkeepers Academy that will be based at Blacktown Olympic Park

Speaking of the A-League, Gam and I missed Queensland Roar's first game of the season last night against Perth Glory, which the Roar eventually won 3-0. Just our luck to miss a game that the bastards actually won- I lost count of the number of games we went to last season where the crowd of Queenslanders jumped to their feet countless times to applaud what promised to be a sure goal only to sink back into our seats releasing a collective sigh of disappointment.

Here's hoping for a better season for the Roar!

Cindy Crawford Botox 'shock'

Cindy Crawford 1988

Cindy Crawford 2006

While Elle McPherson and any other 40-year-old female actress or former supermodel you'd care to name might have had just as much plastic surgery as Cindy Crawford you won't see any publication more credible than a tabloid rag trumpeting their plastic surgery as being the reason for their 'youthful' good looks. Why? Because they all, however implausibly, deny it.

The SMH article on Crawford's admission that she receives injections of collagen and botox from her plastic surgeon claims that "Many fans had long assumed Crawford's looks were natural."

As Gam replied when I sent him the article:

"Only the dumb ones"

Looking like a Madame Tussaud's waxwork is never the result of natural aging processes, no matter how famous you are. Cindy Crawford is just one of the more honest waxworks.

Aceh: freedom fighters, terrorists.

I've been watching a very enlightening documentary by American journalist William Nessen on Aceh's separatist movement for the last hour or so. After seeing murder after murder, corpse after corpse -all actions of the Indonesian army in Aceh, the documentary touched on the devastation caused by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Footage covering the presence of Indonesian military commander General Bambang Darmono as the "poster boy" for the Tsunami relief effort briefly showed him alongside a grinning but unnamed caucasian man seemingly irrelevant to the story: Australia's then Defence Minister Robert Hill.

Our government is so keen to placate Indonesia's desire to retain its grasp over millions of people who have no desire to be a part of it that we turn a blind eye to the murders and other human rights abuses committed in places like West Papua and Aceh.

I wonder if, decades from now, Australians and their government might be saying the same things about Aceh and West Papua that most of us were saying about East Timor in 1999. Even now that Aceh is about to hold elections in which 'local political parties' are not banned by the Indonesian government (how democratic of them!), it remains to be seen whether the Acehnese will continue to be abused and exploited or will gain genuine autonomy.

At what point does it all become too much for us to pretend such abuse is not happening? Does taking the right moral stance depend on whether or not a country has oil and natural gas reserves that we can stake a claim on?

I hope we're better than that, but I doubt it.

The PornMobile visits schools courtesy of parents

Parental, not governmental, guidance recommended.

In the case of an 11 year old boy being suspended from his primary school for two days after showing fellow students pornographic images he downloaded onto his internet-capable mobile phoe, I don't think it's the kid who needs the discipline.

I'm not quite sure what planet parents live on nowdays, but I managed to get through all thirteen of my years at school without the help of a mobile phone. I can think of one occasion where a mobile would have been handy, and that was when I arrived at the railway/pedestrian bridge over the Macleay river on my usual route home only to see treetops poking out of floodwater on the opposite side.

Maybe that kid's parents thought it was a good idea to buy him a mobile for safety reasons, or maybe it was just because all his friends had one, but whatever the reason, giving him a phone he can hook up to the internet unsupervised is just asking for trouble.

Kids love finding out about 'forbidden' things, and nudity and porn are two of those things. Personally I don't think it's a whole lot different to the time my brother and our young next door neighbour found a bunch of his Dad's porn magazines under some floorboards in the neighbour's garage. I must have been about 10 or 11 at the time, and even though I remember tut-tutting at them for taking the magazines I was still very keen to have a look!

Of course Kim Beazley has seen this incident as another opportunity to plug his 'porn ban' for ISPs:

Labor Leader Kim Beazley weighed into the debate, saying the federal government could do more to help parents curtail the growing online threat by pushing for mandatory internet filters.

"I certainly think there is something the government can do," he told reporters.

"They can adopt our policy of putting in place filters at the point of providers, not at the point of your home computer.

"That's what the government should do and then the kiddy would not be turning up with those sorts of things on his phone or for that matter on his laptop."

That is absolutely dead wrong. Responsibility in this case lies with parents. When Gam and I have kids I may not have a problem if they want to look through my old Playboy magazines, but I will have a responsibility to do my best to ensure they aren't freely available to other peoples' children. It's not the government's responsibility to ban internet porn any more than it's their responsibility to ban Playboy, regardless of how many parents have objections to their children seeing such material.

No parent needs to buy their primary school-aged child an internet-enabled mobile phone any more than they need to buy that kid a car. There's a time and a place for such things, and it's not the school playground.

Slave to the iPod factory

Gam brought the 'iPod slave' claims to my attention when he sent me this item from The Register, and I followed it up with this article on the BBC website.

I doubt that Apple is treating its employees any differently to any other company doing business in China, but making employees work 60 hours a week for A$67 a month is pretty scummy. Mind you, that $67 is after deductions for perks such as 'employee housing' (100 women to a dormitory) and food.

The Register claims that Apple:

has instituted a policy requiring workers to have one day off each week, and limiting them to 60 hours of work per week, except in unusual circumstances

(my bold type)

Because, you know, those uneducated chinese women are just so keen to work more than sixty hours a week for that $67-per-month salary that Apple felt they simply had to legislate some limit to their enthusiasm.

$67 a month isn't exactly 'slave' labour. After all, after saving their entire post-deduction salary for four and a half months they could all afford their very own iPod Nano!

Custard

An exercise:

If you were to describe the taste and mouthfeel of custard, what adjectives would you use?

I'll wait for some answers before explaining my purpose for this post.

UPDATE: I was curious to see how many people would use 'creamy' as a descriptive word for the taste of custard.

My group's assignment in a food product development tutorial on thursday was to come up with an idea for a product and create a 'product concept' statement, which is essentially something that combines a description of what the product is, along with some fluffy words designed to 'sell' the product to the people who are in charge of giving the go-ahead for its production.

Our product contained custard, and I was surprised during the feedback session from classmates when a girl said that she thought the use of the word 'creamy' to describe custard was wrong. Seeing as cream is a major ingredient of custard I assumed 'creamy' would be a natural adjective to use, but asked her what she thought would be a better one, somewhat facetiously suggesting 'custard-y'. She thought that 'custard-y' would be a better descriptive word than 'creamy'.

After seeing the responses here (particularly Anthony's use of 'custardy'!) I have to stand corrected on my original presumption :)

Got Semen?

"I remember a time when sex was about love..."

Just as well for people in the field of animal husbandry the database ScienceDirect doesn't have a 'safe search' filter:

Just now I was searching for articles on the buffering capacity of citric acid, relating to orange juice.

Among my search results was an article titled "Effect of holding and washing on the quality of goat semen".

No thanks, ScienceDirect. Maybe some other time...

Taxpayer-funded political junkmail to cost $60m

The SMH reports that Special Minister of State Gary Nairn has increased the 'printing allowance' of Federal MPs by $25 000 per MP to $150 000.

I guess inflation must have hit the printing sector really hard to justify that kind of waste of taxpayers' money.

Mr Nairn said the Coalition capped the allowance at $125,000 four years ago and the increase reflected increased printing costs.

But Labor's public accountability spokesman, Kelvin Thompson, called the increase extravagant and excessive and said there would be so many leaflets at election time the RAAF would be needed to drop them.

An incumbent MP with so much money at their disposal would have an unfair advantage against the person trying to unseat them, he said.

Funny, I though inflation was considered high around 3%. Surely a 20% rise in 'printing costs' deserves some sort of investigation.

Iraq: Who wouldn't want to live there?

Dreaming of a Baghdad holiday

The ABC reports that some bludger from Iraq has been holidaying in Nauru for five years courtesy of Aussie taxpayers:

The Federal Government says it is considering its options for dealing with an Iraqi asylum seeker who has been detained on Nauru for five years.

Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has confirmed Nauru's Foreign Minister has sent a letter about the man.

It is understood the letter urges the Federal Government to evacuate the man to Australia, due to concerns about his mental health.

Two Iraqi men are being held on Nauru after they failed security assessments.

As we all know, thanks to the invasion of Iraq by the US and its various drooling lapdogs Iraq is now a stable democracy and a place where people are safe from the horrors of Saddam and his human shredding machines.

I thought Amanda could perhaps do the Iraqi Tourism Bureau a favour and print out some holiday package ideas. Maybe do a little leaflet drop on Nauru. After all, with attractions like these how could our dear queue-jumping friends help but be eager to jump on the first plane home?

Bomb Kills 8, Wounds 28 in Baghdad

Number of Civilian Deaths Highest in July, Iraqis Say
The 3,438 deaths in July, a 9 percent increase over June, reinforces criticism that the new Baghdad security plan is failing.

5 Bombs Kill at Least 57 in Baghdad

Blast Kills 35 Iraqis at Shiite Shrine in Najaf

Bank Robbery and Bombs Kill 24 in Iraq

Next thing you know, Australians will be catching rickety boats to Iraq to partake of the joys of life in Baghdad... no wonder the Howard government can't figure out why the Iraqi people in detention centres here don't want to go back.

Australia through to Asia Cup Final

Socceroo goal-scorer and A-League player Travis Dodd.

With no Gus Hiddink and an all-A-League lineup, the Socceroos started out a bit shaky. Almost like the Socceroos of old. Unlike the pre-Hiddink Socceroos however, this time when things weren't going their way they didn't start sulking and playing dirty- instead they turned things around and started creating chances on goal from around the 26th minute.

The final score of 2-0 is probably a little bit flattering; Kuwait weren't easy beats and Australia didn't score until the 75th minute, with Travis Dodd putting one away. Sasho Petrovski scored again in the 86th.

It's good that they're through, but unless Australia improve, this isn't going to be an Asia Cup winning team.

Happy Blogday to VTAY

The Voice of Today's Apathetic Youth is now one year and one day old.

I forgot about the blogiversary yesterday, but at least I remembered to post! It feels kind of weird to bother commemorating it at all, but it is a milestone of a sort.

You can't stop a smoker

... from harming their own child:

The news that one in six pregnant Australian women smoke fits nicely with a little incident I witnessed yesterday on the stairs leading down to the City Cat (ferry) stop at North Quay:

A young woman and a lady who was presumably her mother were carrying a stroller containing the woman's sleeping toddler down the stairs. There is a cruddy looking ramp that adds about 30 seconds to the walk to the City Cat, but I think a lot of people barely realise it's there.

The young woman was holding on to the stroller with only one hand, grasping a lit cigarette with the fingers of the other. The stroller twisted in her grip and almost tipped her child down the stairs. The grandmother hurried to steady the stroller, as the woman with the cigarette tried to adjust her single-handed grip without having to drop her half-smoked cigarette. It looked as if she was just as concerned about dropping the cigarette as dropping her child.

Among pregnant teenagers who gave birth in 2003, the rate was 42.1 per cent, compared with 10.9 per cent of mothers aged 35 and older.

Among Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander mothers, it was over half - 52.2 per cent. Figures for 2004 showed that 24.8 per cent of all women aged 15 to 44 smoked.

I was listening to an interview on NewsRadio yesterday morning regarding this report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in which the interviewer asked whether smoking around children should be considered a form of child abuse, given the well-known and wide-ranging impact on the health of children exposed to cigarette smoke. The answer given by the person being interviewed (I forget who) was somewhat indirect, but gave the impression that more and more health professionals are leaning in that direction.

I sincerely hope that's the case. If parents won't put a priority on their childrens' health then the government should.

Conscience vote for stem cell research

Working hard on the 'leadership hair', pity about the nutbag religious bit.

John Howard's decision to capitulate to the wishes of many of his MPs and allow a conscience vote must be a slap in the face for ace headkicker and wannabe PM #2, Tony Abbott, who is vehemently against anything that the Catholic church dictates he should be against, including the therapeutic cloning of embryos for stem-cell research.

That's murdering babies, for the non-scientific types.

In typical right-to-lifer fashion, Tony also believes that once they've made the trip down the for-procreation-only canal they're all on their own and should be looking after themselves. Or at least that's what can be assumed given his voting record on keeping refugee children behind Australian razor wire.

All planned out

Yesterday Peter Beattie claimed to have not made up his mind on whether to call an early election. This morning Peter Beattie went to the Governor's mansion to call an election. By lunchtime we'd received Beattie government election propaganda in the mail.

I may not think much of Peter Beattie but I do hope he wins. The alternative is pretty unthinkable.

Taking the moral high ground

This is from Jesus' General:

How democracies wage war I'm almost completely lifting the following from the Angry Arab. I've never done that before, and I'll doubt I'll ever do it again, but I think it's important that you see how our client state, Israel, a democratic nation, uses precision munitions, paid for and provided for us, to take the fight to the terrorists.

Samira's story is so sad. She reached Tyre hospital today, but she was injured on Friday when Israeli strikes hit her house in Dhayreh in South Lebanon. She was taken on a donkey ( yes a donkey) to Nakkoura , and from there they had to hitch hike to Tyre. By the time they got there she had lost all her blood. She will not make it , the doctors say. she was wounded in the leg and had she been able to reach the hospital sooner , she would have been fine. But due to the fact she bleeded for so long, her brain was damaged and she is now considered clinically dead.

Mohamad is not related to samira, but he reached the hospital in Tyre today too. He was with his dad on their motorcycle when some pilot decided to see if he can get them. He did get them : the father is now in the hospital in a critical condition : he doesn't remember his own name. Mohamad , 11 , will not die , but he lost both his legs.

Remember, we are better than the terrorists because we use only the best, most expensive precision weapons to kill and maim civilians.

Playboy Jokes of the Month

I don't think I did a 'Playboy jokes' post last month because the ones in the last issue were all duds. Here's my pick of this month's jokes:

Two terrorists were chatting. One pulled out his wallet and flipped through the photographs.

"This is my oldest," he said proudly. "He is a martyr. And this is my second oldest. He too is a martyr."

"Ah," the second terrorist said, "they blow up so fast."


Two married buddies were at a bar one night when one turned to the other and said, "Whenever I go out drinking I park around the corner from my house and try to sneak in the back door, but I always seem to wake up my wife. Then she yells at me for being out so late."

"You're taking the wrong approach," the other guy said. "I screech into the driveway, slam the front door and yell to my wife that I want a blow job. By the time I get upstairs she's sound asleep."


A man noticed his co-worker wearing an earring. "I didn't know you were into that kind of stuff," he said.

"It's just an earring," the co-worker replied.

"How long have you been wearing it?" the man asked.

"Well," his co-worker replied, "ever since my wife found it in our bed."

Early election imminent for Queensland

'Tough' decision on early election: Peter Beattie

Oh what a surprise! Bundaberg Labor MP Nita Cunningham has resigned because she has cancer, which looks like it will 'force' Peter Beattie to call an early election.

Just as well he happened to pay for a bunch of promotional billboards that have been popping up around Brisbane over the last few weeks. They'll come in handy in this unexpected change of circumstances.

Peter Beattie is clever. By having an MP with cancer resign at a convenient time he puts himself beyond the reach of much of the expected criticism from the Opposition for breaking his word not to hold an early election; he'll shield himself behind the sympathy generated from the 'cancer resignation'

He claims to have not yet made a decision on an early election, but my money is on an early election being announced with the excuse that he did not want to spend thousand of dollars of taxpayers' money on a byelection, only to hold a general election less than six months later.

Steven Fielding sees the light

He might be a dim bulb in a dark room, but Family First Senator Steven Fielding has finally realised that the Federal government's proposed laws promoting even further abuse of asylum seekers don't really provide an answer to the question "What would Jesus do?"

Now we wait to see if there are enough Senators in the Liberal-National coalition who can scrape together enough collective humanity to have the decency to oppose these laws.

Health cost hypocrisy

A good point is attributed to NSW Health Minister John Hatzistergos in this report in the Weekend Australian:

If rising costs necessitated the rise of over 5%* in private health insurance premiums approved by Tony Abbott, then why do Federal government health funding arrangements with the States allow for annual increases of only 2.8%?



*I was under the impression that the figure by which private health premiums rose was an average of 8%, but the figure given in the article was 5%.

Rich Wankers Protest Taxes in Sardinia

Too rich for Bill Gates?

As if the reason for the existence of this article in The Australian today isn't ridiculous enough, the author provides a real howler at the end with this little piece of bullshit:

The taxes, which apply until the end of September, run from E1000 for 14m-16m yachts to E15,000 for yachts over 60m. They must be paid within 24 hours of arrival. Software billionaire Bill Gates was reported to have cancelled his annual trip to Sardinia because of the charges.

Sure, Bill Gates really wanted to go to Sardinia but the tax would have sent him overbudget.

Wedding for One, please!

Lesson #1: No matter how much you're in love, you can't marry yourself.

From an article in the Weekend Australian:

For almost a year, Kimberly Chustz spent every spare moment she had planning the biggest day of her life -- the wedding dress, the cake, the bridesmaids' bouquets and the colour of the reception napkins. Then one day she woke up married, and discovered a big hole in her life.

"Once I got back from the honeymoon, I kind of felt myself being sad," she said. "I'd been consumed with this event for 11 months. Now what do I do with my time?"

The bigger the wedding, the harder the return to ordinary routines, according to American psychologists treating increasing numbers of recent brides suffering from post-wedding depression (PWD).

The vogue for ever more expensive and elaborate ceremonies appears to be creating a generation of brides-in-therapy who never recover from the loss of the attention that accompanied their wedding planning.

I can sum up what the problem for these 'Bridezillas' is:

'Their' wedding is more important to them than the person they are marrying. They see the man they marry as a means to an end, the end being getting a pretty white dress and the adoration (or else!) of everyone they know.

As a result they often wind up in bad marriages. Thinking too much about themselves and not enough about the sort of person they promised to spend the rest of their life with means that they often get a nasty wake up call after the party is over.

Thank god divorce is legal in Australia and this particular breed of bimbo isn't stuck with their Big Fat Mistake for the rest of their lives.

Australia imprisons child asylum seekers

We have a lot of things to be proud of in Australia. The fact that we lock kids seeking asylum behind razor wire fences isn't one of them. It's downright scummy. It doesn't do the kids any good, it doesn't do Australian citizens any good and it sure as hell doesn't do our reputation any good.

So why do it?

US now owns Iraqi wheat trade

In The Age today: the US now controls around 75% of all wheat exports to Iraq. It would probably be wrong to say the Iraqi government control the imports, because no doubt the people in charge have been installed by the Americans in the same way AWB tried to install its own favoured people in the relevant portfolios in the Iraqi government.

What happens to Australian wheat when we can't bribe anyone to take it off our hands?

One more reason to ban public smoking

From the BBC:

Harvard School of Public Health researchers looked at over 14,000 men and pre and post-menopausal women in rural China.

The scientists measured hip bone mineral density, and recorded non-spine fractures and smoking history.

Second-hand smoking was defined as living with one or more people who smoked each day.

Pre-menopausal non-smoking women who lived with one smoker had more than double the risk of osteoporosis compared to those who lived with none.

And those who lived with two or more smokers exposed to second-hand smoke were found to have a threefold greater risk of the condition.

They also had a 2.6 times greater risk for a non-spine fracture, compared to non-smokers.

Dense bone

A separate study by Gothenburg University researchers looked at 1,000 men aged between 18 and 20-years-old .

It was found that smokers' bone density in the spine, hip, and body as a whole, was lower than in their non-smoking peers.

A CAT (Computer Tomography) scanner was used to obtain 3D images of bone.

The researchers say smoking appeared to primarily affect a specific type of bone called cortical bone, by reducing its thickness.

This very dense bone forms a layer, similar to the enamel on teeth, around softer, spongy bone.

While this passive smoking study only included the partners of smokers, no-one should have to be exposed to another person's cigarette smoke at any time. The health risks are diverse and very serious; just because a person suffers less damage to their wellbeing from passive smoke if they don't actually live with a smoker doesn't mean the damage that does occur from being exposed to cigarette smoke in public spaces should be ignored. It's still a huge problem.

The Joys of Private Healthcare in America

From the New York Times website, a story on a new treatment for Scleroderma:

At the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center in Aurora, Colo., on roughly two consecutive eight-hour days every month, Mr. Nickerson, 49, is hooked up to an intravenous drip that is “exhausting, boring and time-consuming,” he said.

His friends and colleagues raised $83,500 for his intravenous immune globulin treatments, which infuse blood and give him new antibodies. Mr. Nickerson’s insurer considered the treatments experimental and denied coverage. They cost around $37,000 each; 13 were ordered.

“The treatments are saving my life,” said Mr. Nickerson

Non NYTimes link to article here.

The Australian: keeping the nation underinformed

Headline for a story on The Australian website today:

'Israel widens targets to hit civilian sites'

The implication being that civilian sites were not targets already? What rock has The Oz been living under for the past month?

'Safe in Kabul'

Since the US & Co. invaded Afghanistan it seems there hasn't been a day go by where civilians aren't blown up or shot dead. It always bugged me that our government was sending asylum seekers back to a place that they strongly warned ordinary Australians about going. It seemed ineviteable that some of them would be killed.

And they were.

I heard on NewsRadio this morning that Amanda Vanstone is all narky at the Edmund Rice centre and the ABC for making these 'allegations' public. Yeah! How dare they go and make her life harder than it already is? Shame, ABC, shame.

I think what Amanda wants is some interviews with the 'allegedly' dead asylum seekers in order to prove they are really dead, or something. Until that time we should keep an open mind about the whole thing.

Wholemeal Bread and Butter Pudding

I hadn't had bread and butter pudding in years until I decided to make one yesterday. In fact I'd never even made one before; bread and butter pudding was the domain of Mum and her crockpot. Nevertheless, I got all inspired after I saw a recipe in this week's Brisbane News and decided to give it a go.

I made a couple of changes to the recipe they provided, plus an unplanned change after a d'oh! moment when I blindly followed the recipe's method instead of using common sense and spilled the egg-custard mixture into the tray of water trying to maneuver it into the oven. Common sense (aka Gam) noted that I should have just sat the pudding dish in the water dish and poured boiling water in around it before putting the whole lot in the oven. In my defense I was probably acting on autopilot, having been at the UQ Open Day until a little after 2pm and choosing to cook instead of eat lunch as soon as I got home.

The Brisbane News recipe says to use stale bread with crusts removed. Personally, I like the variation in texture provided by leaving the crusts on the bread. I use wholemeal bread. It also says to use jam on top of the buttered bread. I might try that sometime, but I didn't this time. I added an extra 40g sugar to the recipe to compensate, using brown sugar instead of castor sugar.

5-6 slices of stale bread
3-4 eggs
400mL cream
700mL milk
140g brown sugar
vanilla
butter

You need an oven-proof container of approximately 2L volume, and another oven-proof container of some kind large enough to hold the first, plus enough water to reach half-way up the sides.

Grease the sides of the container with butter.

Whisk the eggs with the sugar, then add the cream, milk and vanilla.

Butter the bread and layer it in the container. I layered most of the slices buttered-side down but laid the final slices buttered side up and sprinkled some extra brown sugar on the top so it would caramelise.

Pour the egg mixture over the buttered bread.

Place pudding container in its water basin and fill the water basin with boiling water until it reaches about halfway up the side of the pudding container. If you aren't sure you'll be able to manage to put all this in the oven without spilling pudding mixture into the water (or boiling water onto your skin) then just put it in the oven and pour boiling water from the jug into the water container. Bugger losing the heat from the oven, it's better than losing the pudding and/or bits of your skin.

Bake at ~160ºC for 1 hour.

Death by lesbian in Queensland: it could happen to YOU!

This ridiculous bit of storytelling from the Courier Mail had me in stitches. If you believe the CM you'll believe that no-one, barring those dealing in death, drugs and drunken brawls, dares venture into the very centre of Brisbane. I'm amazed they left out 'sex'. Oh wait, they managed to include a little story about some 'lesbian lovers' in Noosa or someplace who attacked an old lady. Got to watch out for those lesbian lovers.

I've had plenty of occasion to walk through Queen Street Mall at all times of the night, and at no time did I ever feel unsafe. There's always cops nearby, for starters; there is a police station just around the corner.

To get into trouble you pretty much have to go looking for it: I have only ever witnessed one fight, around 6am in the morning, when a young white man ran into the coffee shop I was in, fleeing from a young aboriginal man who wanted to have a go at him. The reason soon became clear when the young white guy, hiding behind a table, started calling out things like 'fucken nigger' and doing his best to provoke the fight even further, while pretty much hiding behind the coffee shop manager for safety. The guy deserved a hiding but didn't get one, in my opinion.

As for the Courier Mail pushing the line that the 3am lockout is responsible for more fights, statistics simply don't back that up. There has been a decrease in violent incidents at the Gold Coast since the very sensible laws were enacted, and little change in the number of reported incidents in Brisbane, despite the best propaganda efforts on behalf of the clubs and pubs in the area. Sure, the queue for a taxi at 3am is pretty huge, but there are security guards at the taxi rank and I've never seen any problems there. That's not to say they don't occur on occasion, just that I haven't witnessed any, and also that they are most likely swiftly dealt with.

I suppose hoping for a real newspaper in Brisbane would be too much...

Pass me the bazooka: Drivers ignore no-mobile laws

Would they do it if their licence was at stake?
Photo: Fiona-Lee Quimby, SMH

Another story about morons behind the wheel. The SMH reports that in the past year the number of people caught using their mobile phones while driving has increased by 4000 to 25 000.

From personal observation I would say the problem is probably just as bad in Queensland. I have lost count of the number of times I have seen someone lurch to a halt well over the pedestrian line at a red light because they were on their phone and not paying attention. Drivers also tend to drift from side to side in their lane (and sometimes out of their lane) perilously close to cyclists when their attention is on their phone conversation rather than the road. Sure, I've had plenty of near-death experiences with people simply driving badly as well: in Queensland there is a culture of simply ignoring the road rule that states that indicators must be used before turning a corner. I assume such a rule exists; I learned to drive in NSW so I wouldn't really know.

The last thing I need as a pedestrian and cyclist is for people to add one more dangerous aspect to their driving. No phonecall is important enough to break the law for. If it's terribly important a driver can simply pull over at the first safe opportunity and call the person back. No-one should have to die or wind up in a wheelchair because some idiot wanted to reply to a text message while they were driving. What the hell do people think we did 10-15 years ago when almost no-one had a mobile phone?

Oh I forgot: the world ended. Silly me.

Israel kills farm workers

Target practice...

Looks like Israel is trying as hard as it can to provoke Syria into entering its war.

I can only hope that history will judge Israel and the governments supporting its war crimes in the way they deserve. They're sure as hell getting a free ride now.

Marlin impales 'sport' fisherman

If only things went the other way more often...

When it comes to so-called 'sport fishing' I always feel rather cheery at the thought that it's sometimes possible for the fish to exact some revenge.

No City Hunter!

Sarah, upon finding out City Hunter wasn't on.

How could they?! SBS advertised their 'cult movie' with clips from City Hunter and then showed some other Jackie Chan movie! Sure I'm really too tired to watch a movie anyway, and I have uni early tomorrow, but it's the principle! It's false advertising!

If they want to atone for this heinous act they should really schedule a screening of City Hunter during the mid-semester break in September... *cough*

Daily Show on SBS!

The TV gods have finally sent some good watching my way:

Tomorrow night SBS is showing The Daily Show with Jon Stewart followed by my favourite movie, City Hunter! The Wikipedia link just doesn't do that movie justice...

Shame it's not on Friday night instead of Thursday, given that I have a huge day at uni on Friday, but it's not every day that pure TV gold appears on the small screen so I'll take what I can get.

While I'm on the subject of TV, I want to give another thumbs up for SBS screening the show 'Two of Us'. It's based on the long-running column in the SMH's Good Weekend magazine, of which I've been a long-time fan. It's just a shame the series is only 13 episodes. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Now maybe some more wishing will get SBS to screen The Boondocks animated series...

'Can Do' recycled water

Here's something novel: I find myself in agreement with both Brisbane 'Lord Mayor' Campbell Newman and John Howard.

The first coherent sentence I've ever heard uttered by Campbell 'My Mummy Was a Howard Government Minister' Newman went something along the lines of "the decision on water recycling is too important to be left to a referendum". Translation: the decision on water is far too important to be left up to a bunch of stupid hicks like the ones who voted 'No' in Toowoomba.

He was right. Referring to Peter 'The Populist' Beattie's backpedalling decision to hold a referendum on water recycling in South East Queensland in 2008 after changing from his stance that water recycling was 'ineviteable' after he saw the results of Toowoomba's referendum, Campbell Newman managed to string together a sentence that didn't involve the words 'can do' or 'tunnels'. Well done, Campbell, you can have a star!

John Howard today has said that moves to introduce water recycling need to be made well before 2008. He's right, of course. Howard can have a star too.

Populism works well as a strategy for Peter Beattie, but the issue of water is something governments need to take responsibility for. I think real policy would be an even better strategy.

You can't eat beer and cigarettes...

A headline for one of the stories on the SMH website today reads 'Beer, cigarettes, home loans up'.

I don't buy or use any of the three (unless someone is buying me a Trappist beer!), but looking at the receipt for our grocery shopping today I noted that Coles '$mart buy' brand 500g butter is $2.05, up from $1.95 a few weeks ago, and Savings brand 2kg plain flour is $1.66, up from $1.58 a few weeks ago.

It's not looking good, although hopefully the higher prices on cigarettes will motivate a few more people to quit.