Doctor Who?

I was doing a puzzle the other day - it was anagrams - names of television shows - and the answer was Doctor Who ... although it could well have been Torchwood (the Doctor Who spin-off)! Who would have thought there names were anagrams? I had certainly never noticed it before ... and I am still a little pleased that someone thought to do it!

End of an era

I know I haven't watched it for a long time but I know there are folk who do ... and they will be horrified to hear that they will no longer be able to catch up with Days of Our Lives (sands through the hour-glass) when Channel 9 stops broadcasting it on April 26! I'm not sure if it was this or another American soap where one of the main actors went upstairs to get something (a pair of socks or maybe skis for a trip) and didn't reappear for several years - and then it was if nothing had happened!

Siri-ously

I thought it would save me some time (and lead to more regular blogging) if I could use Siri (on the iPhone) for dictation/recording - but based on the following, this may not be the best solution:
* Driving along the Gold Coast hwy today it just isn't getting any better the line Stromley 600 astilbe and Princess to pick people way from the light rail works are also
* Teasley TUBSLEY Park in Southport is that Mandor Tuesday and public
* The weather is school monkey one thing here this today on the way last stop.

Accidental ?

The full details are a little sketchy now (I really should have blogged this as soon as I made a note to ... when it happened) but two Australian men holidaying in Phuket have been arrested for accidentally shooting two German tourists. Hmmm ... how does that happen? Apparently, and I'm not sure if this is the police or the two men who were saying this, they had meant to shoot a Danish tourist (aka Danny) but missed and hit the Germans instead. Hmmmm, I guess that would make it an accident of sorts, but what I don't understand is how two Australian "tourists" end up with a gun in Thailand. The men reportedly had links with a motorcycle club here in Australia, but I can't fathom what kind of accident it must have been for them to have a gun fall into their laps while they were there ... and then for them to run into someone that they wanted to shoot. Ah well, this may be one story we will never know in full ... and just another reason to be careful while you're on holiday! You never know who's out there gunning for someone - and whether they're a decent shot or not!

Preppers

For far too long I have been trying to get to my backlog of articles - clipped but never read - and finally I did - and was amazed to see that something I had seen on National Geographic in the last few days rated a mention. i had seen a man cut a pig's carcass in half - and here was information about him and what he used - his invention the Crovel. Tim Ralston is a Prepper - someone who fears The End Of The World As We Know It and who is doing something about it ... geting ready, being prepared, being a Prepper! And he's helping other people get reading with products like the Crovel - which started life as a Prepper accessory and which now more than doubles as a weapon - and made him more than a million dollars in the process!

It's hard to know what the Preppers will prepare for now that the Mayan Apocalypse prophecy appears to not have been fulfilled ... we're keeping more than an open mind because if it does herald a new Age of Enlightenment, it would be unfortunate starting it off as a Naysayer!

Cleaning up

"Blog re washing powder counterfeiting" ... this is definitely a reason not to procrastinate - or should have been because now I have no idea where I "filed" this report - and I can't remember the details of the story ... but it did sound intriguing, especially as there was so much - tonnes and tonnes - of the "stuff" involved - 40 to be exact. It turned out to be fake OMO "made in China", packaged in buckets for sale at convenience stores and market stalls throughout south-west Sydney. It was definitely not the real stuff, Unilever (owner of the OMO brand) assured consumers as real OMO doesn't come in buckets here in Australia. Who would ever have suspected that folk would try to clean up with fake laundry detergent? Obviously desperate times call for desperate measures!

What price entertainment?

Illusionist Derren Brown likes to push the envelope - and he certainly seems to be doing it again if you can believe reports just out. In his latest series, the first two episodes are given over to the story of a young man who Brown induces to believe the ''world as we know it" has ended and he wakes into a Post-apocalyptic world where he may be the only survivor. I'm not sure if this is on it's way to Australia yet - but I hope it is because the concept is fascinating: that you can (cleverly) turn a person's life into a horror movie-and then say it's for his own good! The whole undertaking was very complex and complicated and it will be interesting to see how it was executed.

Changing laws

It is the law of diminishing returns or the law of marginal utility that determines whether your second cup of coffee is as good as the first? Of course, it's economics but sometimes it's just all about taste - and what you feel like at the time. And what was the name of our Economics teacher at Meadowbank Tech who taught us everything we needed to know (but not necessarily remember) about Economics using examples based on tomatoes and hi-fis (it was a little while ago)!!

Felix's freefall

Congratulations Felix Baumgartner- and well done for your fantastic freefall from the edge of space. As you stepped off the platform of the gondola over 35km above Earth, for just a moment I thought you might do a Buzz LightYear ... spreading wings and instead of falling you would soar upwards ... "to infinity and beyond". But you didn't ... but you did achieve the speed of sound on your fall to earth, making yours the fastest freefall on record. But not necessarily the longest - something to do with the fogging-up of your helmet visor and an early deployment of your parachute? But it was wonderful to see that the man who held (still holds) that record was on your support crew - Joe Kittinger (now 84) who back in 1960 did the freefall from a balloon 31km high. This is truly the stuff of legends - that leap of faith when you (and he) stepped out into space (well, almost space!) and fell to earth!

Will power

It hardly seems fair - if it's true. According to research published a while ago, but currently being challenged, your level of will power is affected by the amount of glucose the frontal lobe of your brain ... meaning the more sugar you have on board the more will power you have ... and if your sugar levels drop - as they do when you are dieting - so does your will power. Anyone else see the problem here?

Solid as a ...

Words are funny things. I was reading this morning that it was the anniversary of Prince Charles and Lady Diana's divorce only a few days ago - and was thinking that there was a marriage that was rocky ... and then wondered how "rock" and "rocky" could have such divergent meanings - if something is "rock solid" then it is a world and a half away from being "rocky".

In the moment

It's amazing that we can so easily miss things. Driving in to work this morning (or, more precisely, the coffee shop I go to before I go to work) I noticed the sky was starting to get a pink glow - what does that mean? I know there's that old rhyme - red sky at night = shepherd's delight; red sky at morning = shepherds take warning. But why? Is it rain? Cold? Heat? Alien abduction? Something else? The red sky did come - and as I took out the iPhone to take a photograph, I had to wait for the "updating database" which was taking so long I changed to the native camera application - more time gone - and then so was the colour in the sky. Missed it - the photograph anyway - but at least I noticed it was there. And wondered how much of the colour was because of volcanic ash drifting across from New Zealand following the eruption on the North Island.

Settle ...

I don't know about anyone else but I feel a little sorry for Australia's Olympic Contenders. There has been some talk recently about the young lass who didn't manage Gold and was distraught about placing second. They even called off a press conference because she was too upset. So, since when has coming second been such a crushing defeat? Well, as we all know, no-one who goes to the Olympics wants to come second ... but, of course, there can only be one winner and it depends on their performance on the day. And while it's disappointing not to win, it seems that the media could help by not fuelling discontent over placing rather than winning by saying things like: he had to settle for second! Settle? Settle? What are they thinking?

Z is for Zombies

Z is for Zombie - not really but that’s a bit the way I feel at the end of the A-Z blogging challenge. It has been a fantastic exercise and experience and wonderful to visit other bloggers also doing the challenge and to marvel at how similar yet different we are. My head is filled with the possibilities of how to continue the blogging challenge because it has taken me to places and subjects that surprised me and certainly did much to stimulate my ... brains ... brains. There is much in this world that we don't pay enough (any?) attention to because we are so/too busy just going about our business like automatons or, dare I say it, Zombies! Here's to a period of zest and zeal in my personal zeitgeist - thanks to the A-Z!

(Thanks to the organizers and all who participated ... See you next year!)

Y is for Yellow

I have always thought of yellow as the colour of intelligence - but, it seems that it is so much more. According to the Australian Oxford Dictionary, it is the colour of buttercups, lemons and gold, of ripe wheat and jaundiced complexions, and of envy and suspicion. I didn't realise though that it could also refer to the press - where it means to be unscupulously sensational. We know that it can be used for describing fauna and flora, and has a use in sports where players can be given the yellow card when they're being cautioned; and there's the yellow flag - which indicates there's a crash ahead, although the yello flag can also be a flower or the flag displayed on a quarantined ship. To have the yellow jack is to be sick with yellow fever, and the yellow peril refers to "the political or military threat regarded as emanating from Asian peoples, especially the Chinese", and since we're in Asia, there's yellow rain which was reportedly a chemical warfare agent but which now appears to have been bee droppings (although it would have made more sense if it had been yellow and black). If you ran from that rain, people might have suggested you had a yellow streak - a trait of cowardice. But yellow is the colour of victory in cycling where the yellow jerseyshows you are a winner - but not necessarily the winner. Of course, some of us just like the colour because it's ... yellow.

X is for X marks the spot

X marks the spot. Why do they say that? Is it because on the old treasure maps they would put an X to show where the treasure was buried rather than writing "here there be treasure". It was obviously something they didn't trust to memory or shipmates. Were there back-up treasure maps? Or furphies which put the X somewhere which wasn't the spot where the treasure was? And why was it an X and not a Y or even a number? Maybe it had to do with map references, the intersect of longitude and latitude lines. They wouldn't have had triangulation then - or maybe they did and knew how to use it - although it seems a little more difficult than specific map coordinates. Of course, it's hard to know if pirates really did bury their treasure - it probably wasn't something that was publicised. It definitely was the stuff of fiction though with the pirates of Treasure Island having buried treasure aplenty but research suggests it's usually the stuff of legends rather than real life.

But even if X didn't find a place on treasure maps, it did prove useful - and still does - how could you say 10 in Roman Numerals if X didn't mark the spot?

W is for Wish

Does wishy-washy just mean you can't decide what it is you (want to) wish for? If you were referring to a person's inability to make a decision or lack of strength, wouldn't you just use "washy" rather than ”wishy-washy”? But I'm more interested in the wishes. What would we wish for if someone offered us, say, three wishes. Would it be something for yourself, something for your nearest and dearest, or something to benefit the world in general? Would the difficulty in deciding depend on the wish-giver's sphere of influence? There's a world of difference between world peace and a pie for lunch. And what if you knew there would be not-incredibly-wonderful consequences from the wishes a la The Monkey's Paw. And if you were the one with the power to grant wishes - as long as you weren't constrained by having to grant the wishes to the person who released you from the magic lamp (and why were you in there in the first place, and if you have the power to grant wishes why can't you grant your own?) - how would you decide who to give them? Would you want to give them to someone pure of heart? With a social conscience? Sound business acumen? And what would you base the decision on? How can you tell what a person really thinks and feels just by watching/talking with them - and wouldn't it change if they knew you had the power to grant their (every) wish?

If you had one minute to decide what your three wishes will be - what would they be? Start now ... and no being wishy-washy ...

V is for Victory

We were sitting listening to the radio this morning as we had our breakfast and the subject matter was A.N.Z.A.C. Day. One segment was about soldiers writing letters home saying that they had killed Germans, and their loved ones would write back saying don't tell me about that - so they would write about the landscape instead. That then led to the story of a friend of S's Dad who had served in World War I and who, at one point, came face to face with a German soldier - he looked just like me and I couldn't do it was the general gist of his remarks afterwards - and apparently neither could the German, because the friend was still around to talk about it. But it brought up the notion that perhaps there was a better way to fight wars - like scissors paper rock - and whoever lost went home! Then, because we all know that the same ideas are always floating out there in the universe, I saw this photo. V is for Victory, but it would be nice if it could be a Virtual Victory instead without loss of life.

U is for Undecided

We received the rates bill today and with it a survey asking if we would be prepared to support a new library (yes) by agreeing to a special rates increase over several years to fund it (undecided). But how could we say no ... because it would be good to have a new building to house the collection and there could be some purpose-built areas as well. To say yes would mean a certain rate increase but we would be investing in the infrastructure of the local area ... except that it's not our local area anymore but one day we may want to sell and the more infrastructure (read: libraries) in the area, the more inclined someone might be to want to buy. To support the library or not? Still undecided but leaning more towards yes. I think.

T is for Too Late?

I had forgotten that S is for Sun - and now the A-Z Challenge has moved on to T. So Too Late? Ray Bradbury wrote a story about a young girl who is waiting for the rain to stop and for the sun to come out - she knows it will, but no-one else at her school has ever see sunshine. They lock her in a room and while she is there the rain does stop and the sun does come out - and while everyone else is entranced by this, all she sees of it (and the world stretching itself in the sunlight) is a ray of light across the floor of that room.

Most of us take the sun for granted - even though some of us do take every opportunity to let it seep into our very being. But what would happen if the sun went out? Not exploded as a supernova but just quietly went out. What would you do when, at 10am in the morning, the sunlight just stopped and the world plunged into darkness? How dark is pitch black? And while the lights would come on as though it was night, there wouldn't even be the reflected light of the moon to brighten the night sky! Would mankind be able to adapt? Would the resultant world be a place we would want to live in? And would we ever stop waiting for it to come back on?