Hammer Blog

The Irony of Women in Charge

2010-07-19T22:36:00.000-07:00

"Minister for the Status of Women, Tanya Plibersek has launched a program to address gender imbalance in leadership opportunities" [MX, 9 July 2010, page 4.]

Tanya Pliberseck is the Federal Member for Sydney, she must be concerned about the leadership imbalance in favour of women for people living in Sydney.

If you live in her electorate:

your Mayor is a woman (Clover Moore);

your State Member is a woman (Clover Moore);

your State Premier is a woman (Kristina Keneally);

your State Governor is a woman (Marie Bashir);

your Federal Member is a woman (Tanya Pilersek);

your Prime Minister ia a woman (Julia Gillard);

your Governor General is a woman (Quentin Bryce AC) and,

your Monarch is a woman (Queen Elizabeth II).

"That's the irony of women in charge, they don't like other women in charge." [Michael R Perry]

Motor Mower Morons

2009-03-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

'... he's no mower that takes a nap at noon-day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn.' [Cervantes]

You know what it's like. You are trying to enjoy a quiet coffee out the back on a Sunday morning when your neighbour starts up his very noisy, smelly motor mower. These ridiculous contraptions which are expensive, dangerous to your health and very unfriendly to the environment, are not even labour saving - most of them you still have to push!

54 million Americans mow their lawns with motor mowers using 800 million gallons of gasoline and pouring tons of pollutants into the atmosphere. The air pollution emitted from mowing your lawn for an hour with a gasoline powered lawn mower is equivalent to driving a motor vehicle for 160 kilometres. [mindfully.org]

If you don't give a stuff about the environment or your neighbour's peace, consider this. Over 80,000 Americans are injured by motor mowers every year. [Landscape Management] (A lot of missing toes there!) But there are less obvious health risks. The force with which a rotary motor mower ejects debris can 'aerosolize' bacteria making it airborne and easy to breathe in. In the US in 2000 a fatal outbreak of Pneumonic Tularemia was attributed to bacteria being spread by lawn mowers. [NEJM]

The noise from these things is beyond health and safety limits. 'A typical gas-powered mower offers prolonged exposure to 90 decibels. Sounds in excess of 85 decibels can damage hearing, but noise at only 65 to 75 decibels can cause hypertension, stress, heart damage and depression.' [Washington Post]

Typically, the size of lawns around an urban house is only around 100 square metres or so. Using a non-motorised, non-polluting, inexpensive reel mower is not really all that difficult in the average back yard. So come on guys, give your neighbours some peace, eliminate a health risk and help save the planet. Get Reel!

Alice in Wall Street

2008-09-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone. "It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less." [Lewis Carroll]

As an old Codger relying for survival on my superannuation, events on the World financial markets have been alarming to say the least. How hard it is to keep up with the new 'products' being traded by the latest bunch of whiz kids out to make their first million bucks. Did I say 'products'? According to my faithful old Concise Oxford a product is 'a thing or substance produced by natural process or manufacture'. These financial products are certainly not that. The other word you hear - 'derivatives' is closer to the mark. With a derivative 'you can insure an investment you want to go up by betting it will go down' [Dr Ellen Brown]

'If you want to inspire confidence, give plenty of statistics. It does not matter that they should be accurate, or even intelligible, as long as there is enough of them.' [Lewis Carroll]

The latest derivative to gain notoriety is the Credit Default Swap (CDS). A CDS is a contract that promises to cover losses on securities in the event of a default [Time]. In other words it is like an insurance policy against a loss caused by the default of a corporation to which you have lent money. Fair enough. But the trouble is, the CDS market is unregulated - 'there is no requirement to actually hold any asset or suffer any loss' and CDSs 'are widely used just to speculate on market changes' [Dr Ellen Brown]. In otherwords to bet against the ability of a corporation to be able to meet its commitments. The CDS market amounted to $US45 trillion in by mid 2007, more than double the size of the U.S. share market [Time]. The Bank for International Settlements reported in 2007 that total derivative trading amounted to $681 trillion, 'ten times the gross domestic product of all the countries in the world combined' [Dr Ellen Brown].

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.' [Lewis Carroll]

But this is madness a huge market place with no real products. One that is collapsing with disatrous affects on real markets and real people. But there are those who are making big money out of this misery. One Canadian company recently sold for $1.4 billion, CDSs that were originally purchased for $158.1 million [Bloomberg]. While CDSs are thought of as being like insurance, Dr Ellen Brown considers them to be 'looking more like insurance fraud' [Dr Ellen Brown]. If these guys want to have a bet they should go to the race track or the Casino. But what can you do about it? Probably nothing - just go for a walk in the swamp:

Jibbon Head Wetland

Walking and Living

2008-09-09T12:31:00.000-07:00

Sadly, that walking legend and Codger icon Alan Waddell died on September 2nd aged 94. He was living proof of the benefits of walking for old codgers. His tramping around Sydney's suburbs is humourously portrayed on his very popular website Walk Sydney Streets.

Fittingly, it has been a week of news releases on the health benefits of walking for the elderly:

On September 3rd a University of Western Australia study was published that provided scientific evidence that walking for the over 50s can boost memory and delay the onset of dementia [Science Daily]. (See my previous blog).
On September 7th it was reported that a study at the University of Kansas found that brain shrinkage, an inevitable consequence of Alzheimer’s, was less pronounced in people who had the disease and were physically active [Kansas City Star].
Also on September 7th the Health News Digest reported on a joint initiative by the American Heart Association and American College of Sports Medicine promoting exercise as a 'natural medicine'. It noted that exercise is vital to our health and well being and plays a vital role in disease prevention, including some cancers.
On September 9th the Frederick (Maryland) News reported on 'well-documented' research that shows that walking 'can help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, improve blood pressure and blood sugar levels, lower the risk of obesity, enhance mental well-being, reduce the risk of osteoporosis, breast and colon cancer and Type 2 diabetes'.
Also on September 9th VOA News reported that stroke victims who were put on a treadmill walking exercise program had better heart and lung function as well as faster walking capabilities than patients who did not go on the treadmill program.

So what's stopping you fellow codgers - get out and get walking! But be careful, there are also some dangers as these articles show:

Woman injured in attack by dogs while walking in neighborhood

Pedestrian walking across I-80 killed

Man exposed himself to girl walking to school in Bonita

Teen Walking Down Street Hears Gunfire, Ends Up Shot

Man struck by car while walking dog

Hiker Infested With Maggots Barely Survived 11 Days Stranded in Jungle

Climbers' leader feared they would die

Missing bushwalker found dead

Woman missing for two nights in bush

'Stupid' bushwalkers exhaust emergency services

Walking and Thinking

2008-09-04T19:36:00.000-07:00

We all know that walking is good for your health, especially in the case of retired old codgers [walking.org].

But I have always thought, intuitively, that walking was not only good for the body but also the mind.

As Rebecca Solnit points out in her book Wanderlust: a history of walking, walking is the defining characteristic of human development related to the development of thinking itself. For Solnit, walking "is one way of maintaining a bulwark against this erosion of the mind, the body, the landscape, and the city" that modern life engenders. [ RMMLA ]

Now there is clinical scientific evidence that walking for the over 50s can boost memory and delay the onset of dementia. The landmark University of Western Australia study was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association. [The Australian ]

That is good news for codgers, do more walking to live longer and keep your mind working. And at the same time, by increasing your footsteps and staying out of the car, you can reduce your carbon footprint.

But it is not always smooth going for urban walkers. Time for a grumble! I hate the signs that tell you "No Through Road". It means I guess that you cannot drive a vehicle through, it is a dead end for automobiles. It does not tell the poor old pedestrian whether there is a pathway through. Why can't we have signs that indicate whether there is a way through for a pedestrian. The sign could read "No Through Traffic" when there was no way through for vehicles only or "No Way Through" when there was no way through for vehicles or pedestrians. It's not that hard, is it?

[The picture of my footsteps through the sand was taken on Narrabeen Beach during a walk I did recently from Mona Vale to Collaroy on Sydney's Northern Beaches. For more pictures go to: Narrabeen.]

Dumb Blokes

2008-08-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

When you waste your time watching television you cannot help but notice that in the advertisements men usually are portrayed as bumbling idiots. The barbecue chef' who's sausages are burning under a metre high flame, the father of the young boy who thinks that the Great Wall of China was built to keep out rabbits and the teenage male who throws the unopened plastic sauce sachet into the stir fry. They are usually tolerated by a beautiful, trim and very efficent wife or mother.

And the jokes:

'What do men and beer bottles have in common? They're both empty from the neck up'.

'What should you give a man who has everything? A woman to show him how to work it.'

For more go to: The O'Byrne Files.

Maybe it is just a payback for all those centuries of male domination:

'It wasn't enough, though, to show women as capable equals. To drive the message home that women were just as good as men, they had to be shown as superior—which means there had to be an inferior. Getting over on the kids wouldn't be much of a coup. No, she had to be smarter than her husband. And everyone agreed that was OK. Men had been "the man" long enough. They were due to be knocked off the pedestal.' [Lorraine Duff merkl, Dumb and Dumber, ADWEEK, 19 Mar 2007.]

OK ALREADY!!!! We deserved it ladies, we don't need the pedestal but what about a bit of even-handedness. Maybe an occasional ad portraying a smart (hetero) male and a naive female. No, can't do that, it would be considered sexist and breach broadcasting's double standards.

Car Freaks

2008-07-31T01:28:00.000-07:00

There was a documentary aired on Tuesday night on ABC1 called The Cars that Ate China. It was about the rising automobile industry in China, now the second largest in the World and soon to be the biggest. I didn't think it possible, but the madness in the West for the love of the motorcar as a status symbol and a dangerous toy for young hooligans is being surpassed by the Chinese. Given the large Chinese population, the already chronic air pollution in Chinese cities and the competition for scarce resources, the prospects for the World economy and environment are chilling. [ ABCs program summary ]

The show raises the issue of man's strange relationship with the motorcar. In one scene in the Cars that Ate China there is a shot of a man seemingly having sex with his car. Not to be outdone, it was reported today (31 Jul 08) in Australia's Northern Territory News, that a man filmed himself speeding at 150kmh while masturbating at the wheel of his drug-laden car. Really! I thought this was a pretty unusual story until I 'Googled' it. Apparently such behaviour is quite common in the Western World, especially in the good old US of A.

In the interests of safety and the good of the planet, the motorcar should be sexed down. Let us produce only drab, utilitarian, efficent, low speed vehicles. After all a motor vehicle is merely a means of transport powered by a device that converts energy from some natural source into mechanical energy. [http://dictionary.reference.com/]

That's all it is guys!!!

Aliens and Golf

2008-07-25T13:53:00.000-07:00

The claim of former Moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell that the US Government covered up alien visits to Earth has brought UFOs, and the reluctance of Earth's Governing powers to acknowledge their existence, back into the news.

Obviously these aliens are highly intelligent creatures, being able to travel the vast distances of space-time to take a peek at us. But why are they so reluctant to make contact with Earthlings? And why do Earthly Governments take such extraordinary measures to deny their existence?

Sightings of a military helicopter escorting a UFO over the Nowra (NSW Australia) Golf Course [Daily Telegraph 25 Jul 08 ] may provide the answer to these vexing questions. Is the reluctance of aliens to establish contact with Earthlings linked to the ancient game of golf?

Imagine travelling light years to reach an insignificant planet orbiting an ordinary star in the outer reaches of a spiralling arm of the Milky Way Galaxy to find the otherwise reasonably intelligent (I use the term loosely) inhabitants of the planet partaking in an inexplicable activity that involves belting a tiny white ball around vast tracts of prime real estate. These creatures appear to get very excited when the ball disappears into a hole in the ground and very angry when it doesn't!

Remember you are looking signs of intelligent life. After observing this behaviour, reports back to base would not be encouraging.
As Earthly Governments have a vested interest in staying in power, they will do anything to discourage extra-terrestrial rivals. This explains why they are prepared to give up vast tracts of the most desirable real estate in populated areas to enable citizens to pursue this strange activity and why a huge amount of prize money is allocated to tempt people to take part in something that would be otherwise seen as a frustrating waste of time.

The evidence is everywhere. Take a walk along the beautiful clifftops of Sydney from Cape Banks to Malabar. In four kilometres you will have to negotiate four different golf courses. There are signs posted to warn you that you walk along the cliff tops at your own risk - not from falling off the cliff edge or flying saucers, but from flying golf balls. You will get filthy looks from golfers who see walkers enjoying the scenery as merely another distraction from their quest to bury that ball.

On a recent Qantas flight from Sydney to Manila a video was shown of the tourist highlights of Manila. Featured was Intramuros, the ancient Spanish Walled City of Manila. Particular emphasis was given to the Nuestra Senora de Guia, the oldest stone fort in Manila and one of the top historic sites in the Philippines. Imagine my dismay when, on entering this most historic site, I came across a prominent sign saying "WATCH OUT - FLYING GOLF BALLS". Yes they have put a golf course around the outside wall of Intramuros.

Why would you put a golf course there? Well, it's obvious now isn't it? Intramuros might be seen as an indication intelligent life - you need to put a golf course around it to discourage that idea.