Ronald Dumsfeld Comes Out Of The Closet.

He has admitted it at long last. Rummy has finally come forward and admitted that terrorists are manipulating the media. How right he is.

Night after night a stream of targeted terrorist material hits the airwaves and there is no escape from it. The real issue is how do you the average John Doe tell the difference between terrorist material and proper high quality independent news?

Simple.

Ronald Dumsfeld is featured in them. That’s right, if you see a piece of news with Rummy in it you should probably reach for the phone and call the FBI. I can’t think of anyone else who promotes an agenda of terror more effectively than Rummy. He even has a colour coded system in place that tells people how afraid they should be.

Underwear

I’ve often wondered if he wears matching coloured underwear for each of the colours in the threat level. But really I like to think of it as the Ronald Dumsfeld show. The quality of his material is superb and each show brings us all more comedy dynamite! Damn if only his writers worked on shows like Friends there’d be a re-union in no time at all.

I must admit that I only stay tuned to see what happens next! The plot lines are thick and juicy and the entertainment value is incredible, I often wonder if the news stations sell more quality ad time during Rummy’s moments of comic genius.

The real tragedy of it all is that real people are dying as a result of his actions.

Today I’m ListeningTo:

War Pigs by Black Sabbath

 

Christian Rock. An Oxymoron.

Actually I think moron is probably the correct word to be used when describing the people who listen to this trash.

I really love music and thats why I can’t understand why anyone would listen to music that’s less challenging or creative than walking across a street, at least when you walk across a street threes a chance you might get killed. Unfortunately the most you’ll suffer from listening to Christian rock is a brain haemorrhage and even then only if you’re lucky.

Praise the lord.

Frankly, no. If I even believed in god I wouldn’t praise him by buying sucky music by bands like Seventh Day Slumber and Petra. I couldn’t believe it when I found out that there was a gospel hall of fame that included Petra.

Solutions.

But I don’t just like to rant (well actually I do), I also like to present solutions to the problem’s I cover especially when the solution is cheap. Today I’d like to present two solutions for Christian Rock. The first one is simple and available from a reputable pharmacy near you.

Note the soft rubberized foam material, coated for easy insertion and guaranteed to block out 90% of all known Christian Rock music. But if that’s not enough my second solution will aid in not only eradicating Christian rockers in your local vicinity, but if you turn it up loud enough you may suffer enough hearing damage that you don’t even need the first solution.

That’s right. The ultimate solution is none-other than the enigmatic Stormtroopers Of Death. With great songs like ‘Speak English or Die,’ ‘Free Dirty Needles’ and ‘Kill The Assholes’ I’m sure you’ll agree it is the ultimate solution to Christian Rock.

Today I’m Listening To:

Jesus Knows Me by Genesis.

Water – The Next Gold Rush

You know its world water week, and as such there are a number of global initiatives taking place to try and raise the profile of a planet that is running low on fresh water supplies.

Did you know that of 100% of water supplies on earth only 1% of it is actually fresh? How about this, only one third of that fresh supply of water is available for consumption. That’s right 0.33% of the total water supply of this planet is available for consumption.

What do we do with this extremely precious resource? We flush it down our toilets, we add acid solutions to it to melt bedrock and recover mineral resources, we piss and shit in it and send it all out to sea, we pour bleach and detergent into it and most shockingly of all, less than half of the water we use is actually used for drinking.

Water, a pressured resource? Absolutely. As the demands increase by an ever increasing population base, so will the pressure on water supply. It’s already so severe in some parts of the world that almost (typically third world) 75% of the water resources available in some countries are diverted to support agriculture alone. This is done at the behest of western ‘civilised’ societies.

Animals, and plants require fresh water and food in order to grow to a marketable weight. These products are then shipped overseas as McDonalds beef patties, or exotic fruits, but they all have one net effect; They transfer the water resources of one country to another and that other country is most likely a Western nation. This is referred to as the virtual water trade.

This re-distribution of water is happening at a rate that is unsustainable. Eventually fresh water supplies hampered by global climate change and severe drought are going to cripple third-world nations further than anyone imagined possible. Cancelling third world debt is only a tiny stepping stone on the path to helping third world nations recover. What they will really need are natural resources that are simply being exported.

How will they end the famine without food, how will they feed the cattle without crops, and how will they grow the crops without water. To most westerners water is a given. In the future water may very well be a privilege not a right.

Visit this site for some more details.

Today I’m Listening To:

How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead

(Th)Intelligent Design

Watery is probably the best way to describe the faecal content of this concept. They cant even muster enough good old horse shit in one spot to make it stand up.

Thintelligent Design (as I like to think of it) brings to the fore the logically in-correct sentiment that life is too complicated to be explained by science alone and some sort of force or being created us all. For those of you who can spot the logical flaw in the aforementioned statement I’d like to congratulate you.

The logical flaw is simple. The statement is pre-emptive and ultimately attempts to tell us that because we do not yet understand, we should stop looking because we never will understand. The logical flaw is simply this, we haven’t finished learning the science behind life.TD promotes a policy of ignorance wrapped in religious dogma dressed up for the 21st century.

Unfortunately the push to teach thintelligent Design in school is being done to the detriment of all. Economies can only succeed because companies can produce products based on discoveries underpinned by scientific discovery and analysis. Without these skills the balance of economic power will shift significantly to societies and cultures that support the age of scientific discovery.

But that’s not my core concern with thintelligent design. My core concern is simply this; Thintelligent design’s primary theological target is not science per se, it is materialism. However, science is perceived by many thintelligent design followers as the lynchpin for society’s descent into materialism. It is for this, and only this reason that science has become a target.

Except they have ran into a small issue. That issue is simply this; Evolution is one of the most robust and widely accepted principles of modern science. TD followers knowing that their weak arguments and un-testable notions can not stand up to logical analysis aim to by-pass this altogether by forcing schools to teach their philosophical concept during fact-based science lessons.

Thintelligent Design is nothing more than a movement that seeks to destroy materialism at the expense of the age of discovery in order to force a narrow world view that god is ultimately the creator. This has nothing to do with design or science and everything to do with religious dogma.

I find it amusing that TD followers try to sell their arguments as fact to the public by publishing them directly without any kind of logical debate on what is being proposed. As a result it is impossible to debate the subject with TD followers for two reasons; Firstly they are incapable of processing fact and would rather enjoy a little fiction dressed up with quotes taken out of context and; Secondly the concepts they are selling simply can not be subjected to scientific test and without this there is no debate or question over the invalidity of TD as a factual concept.

Finally I wish to present a quote that is very much within context.

“The ID movement argues that random mutation in nature and natural selection can’t explain the diversity of life forms or their complexity and that these things may be explained only by an extra-natural intelligent agent,” said Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. “This is an interesting philosophical or theological concept, and some people have strong feelings about it. Unfortunately, it’s being put forth as a scientifically based alternative to the theory of biological evolution. Intelligent design theory has so far not been supported by peer-reviewed, published evidence.”

In contrast, the theory of biological evolution is well-supported, and not a “disputed view” within the scientific community, as some ID proponents have suggested, for example, through “disclaimer” stickers affixed to textbooks in Cobb County, Georgia.

Read the full article here.

Today I’m Listening To:

Diamond by Klint

Surprise, Surprise……

Not really,because far be it for me to be a merchant of doom but what I said would probably happen did.

“If I was in Phonak’s position I would be considering my options with respect to my on-going association with cycling.” – k0rs0

Ultimately the decision was not so much Phonak’s as the team was being released from its contract to sign a new contract with iShares. The decision came from iShares, who have decided not to sign the contract. In face of this and the desertion of other sponsorship oppertunities, the Phonak team will disband at the close of the season.

This is a truly sad end to a very promising team especially when Floyd Landis is preparing to fight to clear his name. I think that rash decisions should not replace cool calm collected thought. But I know for one that recent history has not been kind to the Phonak team.

This was their moment and it was crushed by the doping allegations, now for those that were clean they have only one hope left and that is to disperse amongst the remaining pro teams in the hope of being signed up. I hope they find a team deserving of their talent.

Car drivers in Perth can’t drive.

They really can’t, honest! A major portion of the problem is how Perth drivers handle traffic lights, consequently I believe that we have a serious level of colour blindness in this country.

I’m not sure how it is in your country but in the UK the traffic lighting system works like this;

• If the light is green you can go
• If the light is orange you slow down to a stop, (or prepare to drive on
• If the light was red previously.)
• If the light is red you stop

In Perth the traffic lighting system works like this

• If the light is green you go as fast as fuckin possible.
• If the light is orange you have to floor the fucker to get away before the bastard turns red, or just simply go as fast as fuckin possible if you were at a stop light.
• If the light is red, fuck I wasn’t quick enough but I could still make it if I just go fast.

You will probably notice that there is not much difference between an Orange light or a Green light, and that’s why I reckon all Perth car drivers are colour blind. But it gets much worse.

It doesn’t rain often in Western Australia, as a matter of fact it rains sporadically during three-four months of the year. The rest of the time it’s really hot, and sunny. When it rains Perth drivers simply don’t know what to do.

One of three things happens to Perth drivers when it rains, the traffic crawls to a complete stop (except at traffic lights), or people drive exactly the same way they always do which results in numerous car smash ups, or there is a state of confusion between the two available choices. And if you are a cyclist you’d better watch out.

Cyclists

A few years ago there were stories about a car driver who went around throwing bricks at cyclist’s heads. You’ve heard of the one meter rule? Here it’s about 10cm if the driver is feeling good about him/herself.

Fortunately for those of us of the bicycle persuasion there is a sprawling network of bike paths throughout the city and you only have to go by road occasionally (usually on the most dangerous sections).

Pedestrians

But if you think cyclists have it bad, you should see some of the road crossings pedestrians have to use. When the light turns green at the road crossing it is not an indication that it’s safe to cross, it’s an indication to the cars at the junction to go as fast as possible straight into the pedestrians crossing the road. (I’ll try to get some pictures up about this soon). Most buttons at road crossings don’t actually do anything anyway.

Buttons

I believe that the buttons are merely there to register how frustrated the person attempting to cross the road is. So that by the fifteenth press you are so utterly fed up that the traffic system decides to do something about it and permit you 3 seconds to cross a 7 lane wide road.

The only way to achieve this, funnily enough is by bike, otherwise you’ll get stuck at the inadequately sized traffic island in the middle.

Today I’m Listening To:

Burn by The Cure

IPL – The first encounter.

Well, I promised that I would put up a post about my IPL encounters so here it is!

2 Hours, but more on that later. I decided that I would have the first session at about 10:00AM, I rock up on time and had to sign some forms that appeared to have quite a lot to do with indemnifying the ‘beautician’.

Once the forms were filled in, it was straight into action, a short strip off and warm robe and get yourself comfortable on the bed.

IPL

The thing to remember about permanent hair removal is that there are really only two options. IPL and Electrolysis. I chose IPL for the following two reasons; 1. It’s non-invasive doesn’t require a needle point to fry the individual follicles; 2. There is a risk of scarring with Electrolysis.

The nice lady walked in a few minutes after strippage and begins to apply a gel to the areas to be IPL’d. The gel has been expertly heated to a temperature of -4 degrees centigrade, but I put on a relatively brave face. Then she turns on the machine!

Noisy.

The IPL machine sounds like a cross between a vacuum cleaner and a generator. It’s noisy so my advice to anyone getting this kind of thing done, is to forget about walkmans, iPods or any other MP3/CD player and instead take a good book or a handheld games console. You’ll be there for a while so you may as well enjoy it.

I am then provided with a pair of big sunglasses, and the nice lady puts on her pair of sunglasses. At this point we’re ready to rock and roll.

The nice lady picks up the little handheld ‘head unit’ attached to the IPL machine which looks rather like a bar code reader. Places it on my ankle and zaps the area.

Give me more power Mr Scott.

She asks ‘how did that feel’ to which I replied ‘I barely felt anything’ then she turned up the power. The sensation is like a small electric current passing just through the skin, that and heat. It’s an odd sensation as the heat is instantly there and then gone again.

Moving on took some time as the machine seems to work by building a charge and then flashing the area. After a few minutes there was a rather distressing burning smell in the air.

Smelly.

‘That’s some of the fine surface hair and dead skin cells’ I’m told, it’s not something to worry about, but this is important. If it feels too hot it probably is and the machine should be turned down.

After completing on area, the cold packs were broken out and applied to the area that was just finished. The cold packs are used to cool the skin down, because IPL can produce red patches that are not unlike sunburn, and should be treated exactly like sunburn. The cold packs help prevent this from happening and also cool down areas that it did happen to.

After two hours the nice lady had worked her way up and we were almost done. More cold packs were brought out and strategically placed. With IPL hair loss is not immediate, but should be visible about a week or two after. I was left for a quiet ten minutes, then I got up and dressed, met up with the missus and had a spot of lunch.

Results.

A very interesting experience, quite time consuming and it will be a couple of weeks before I find out what the effect has been. I have another five of these sessions to go, and thankfully they are sufficiently spaced out (one a month).

There you have it, experience number 1. There’ll be a lot more to come as time goes on. Now where is that waxing strip…….

 

Today I’m Listening To:

Oh Sweet Nothing by The Velvet Underground.

Pimp My Ride!

Well, if you read my site, and some people seem to (well the hit counter goes up occasionally but once I swore it went down) you’ll know I’m in love. That’s right I am. I really, truly, madly, deeply love….. My bicycle.

It’s Ok, my missus knows I love my bicycle she knows I love her just as much (I hope, though she might have occasion to disagree). And what do we blokes do to things we really love…. That’s right, we pimp them.

 

 

Mix and match

But you know there are some really good reasons for pimping my ride, and the first one is that it has a real mix and match of groupset components. For example it has Dura-Ace bar end shifters, an Ultegra chain, a Bontrager carbon crank and Chain Rings, Time RSX pedals, an Ultegra front derailleur a Dura Ace rear derailleur and Cane Creek carbon brake levers and an Ultegra 10 spd rear cassette.

 

You could say it’s a Frankenstein creation that somehow works rather sweetly but for real pimpage I’d really like to make it all Dura-Ace (except the brakes I like cane creek). The benefit of a comprehensive single model groupset is that all components are designed to work seamlessly and this translates to a direct performance gain. Dura-Ace is also considerably more lightweight (though a carbon crank is hard to beat) and boasts some particularly fine bearings.

Another item to be pimped are the wheels. Which are sexy Bontrager Race X Lites, but what I really want are a pair of Bontrager Aeolus wheels with a 65mm rim.

 

Wheels

One thing that you have to respect about Bontrager wheels is that they pretty much are the absolute finest on the market. Wheelsets do not get better. However I have a couple of problems with them. The first problem is they are expensive at about $5K (Aussie) a pair. The second issue is that although my bike is a tri bike, it gets ridden every day of the week. Any wheelset has got to be up to the job of a daily routine plus extra long rides at the weekend. And Aeolus may not be up to the task. They are also carbon through-and-through and require special carbon brake pads.

 

That’s where these babies come in. From a pimpage perspective they look great. From a practical perspective the 60mm rim is constructed from carbon, but the outer rim is aluminium. This unholy marriage of carbon and metal results in a strengthened wheelset that should be up to my daily demands whilst ensuring a net performance benefit.

But before I start pimping my ride I’ll enjoy it as is for the moment. It’s only a new item and pimping it out so soon is a bit drastic. But give me a few months and my project will begin… Go faster stripes will not be required when I ‘PIMP MY RIDE’.

Today I’m Listening To:

Brain Damage by Pink Floyd

IPL – Expensive but worth it? Let’s find out.

You know I get waxed, I put a post up about it a while ago, and I get waxed every two months (it used to be every 4 weeks). Now I know most girls who get waxed only need it done about once every 3 months.

Well I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of the pain and suffering and repeat visits and I have decided to take the plunge into IPL Land. Over the coming weeks expect to hear stories about really loud machines, ow-ies not being able to expose ‘certain areas’ to sunlight and relief at the end of it as I never again have to get ‘certain areas’ waxed.

There’s only one thing that stands in the way….. Cost.. It’s expensive. Who’d have thought that something like unwanted body hair could spawn a multi-billion dollar industry, but there you go. Fortunately though the place I’m going to in Perth , WA (Essential Beauty on Hay St.) has a 50% off offer on this stuff. I took this as my queue….

Consult

I had my ‘consult’ today. Basically it revolved around being told some of the limitations of the IPL technology. Firstly if you have dark or heavily tanned skin, then IPL will not be particularly effective for you requiring more visits to the beautician and more expense. It also does not work very well on fair haired people, fortunately my genetic code lends itself to dark roughage mixed with a degree of dug-inned-ness that the Nazi Germany couldn’t achieve. I’m a prime candidate so for the interests of medical science I will record what happens on my blog.

Amongst the other stuff I learned today were that you have to shave the area to be IPL’d you can’t use depilatory creams, and you can not wax the area either. This fills me with an itching dread I know only too well. It also takes about 4-6 visits to complete the job, this is because at any point in time there are only around 30% of your hair follicles growing or active. So in order to really nuke em all you need numerous visits.

The first proper session is on Saturday and apparently it will take about an hour to complete. We’ll see!

Oh yes before I go, I have decided to add in a ‘What I’m listening to’ bit at the bottom of each post starting with this one. Feel free to comment on my poor/good/excellent tastes in music which I’m sure you’ll find rather eclectic.

Today I’m listening to:

Live With Me by Massive Attack

Mediocrity taken to new low. (Snakes on a Plane)

You know how some times you feel that it can’t possibly get worse and by some miraculous achievement it does. That’s what I felt like when I saw the preview/trailer for Snakes on a plane. Check this out.

The trailer voice-over says things like ‘Imagine your worst fear”, “imagine all the worst fears happening at once” and then we are introduced to the concept of snakes on a plane, wow what an imaginative title. I have a different take on it…..

Voice Over: “Imagine your worst fear realised”

Actor1: “Honey, HONEY!!! Oh My god, OH MY GOOOODDDDDD!!!!!”

Voice Over: “When there is no hope of help.”

Actress: Horrific Scream!!!!!!!!

Voice Over: “When you know backup just can’t make it.”

Actor1: “It’s too late”

Sound effect: Toilet flushing.

Voice Over: “When the Toilet Paper Runs Out”

Actor1: “Shit, now what the fuck am I going to do?”

Sound Effect: Trousers being pulled up.

Actor1: “I guess I’ll have to go to the 7 Eleven.”

Sound effect: (timed with Actors movements) Squidge, Squidge, Squidge, Splat

Was the planning meeting for snakes on a plane called ‘jerks round a table?’ I’ve heard that Hollywood is running into imagination issues but this really is taking the piss a bit. What will the sequel be? Ants down their pants? “For god’s sake help me I’ve been buried up to my neck and my face has been smeared with honey!!!”

I didn’t think it possible that mediocrity could sink so far. I reckoned that we had seen it all with ‘Freddy vs. Jason’ or ‘Aliens vs. Predator’ or ‘My aunts, nephews, cousins, sisters, grannies, uncle vs. our Ron and the gigantic mutant alien killing machine.’ Hollywood is so stuck presently that all it can do is churn it sequels and remakes of old movies.

I have an interesting concept for Hollywood, I call it ‘new’. New is risky, but hugely rewarding when it works. All it requires is a little imagination.