28 Feb 2012 - Alice Cooper's long history

I was listening to the radio in my car on the way home the other night and the hosts of the radio show were talking about great comebacks in music history. One of the comebacks that was mentioned was that of Alice Cooper in 1989 after the release of the album Trash, which featured the song 'Poison'. This surprised me, I think the first time that I really discovered Alice Cooper was from the Wayne's World movie. I had known of him and his music before this, but never really put the two together (I was ten when Wayne's World was released in 1992). So from this I had always assumed that his comeback was in fact his first coming, I hadn't realised that all his music prior to that had actually been from the late sixties and the seventies. Also that he had taken a break from music in the early eighties to be a full time father. For instance I knew that he sang the song 'Schools Out', but had always assumed must have come out in the late eighties or early nineties when it was actually released in 1972!

Now I know what many of you are thinking, "how could you not know this?" I agree, it seems pretty strange that I am only learning this at the age of 29. I guess I had just not given it much thought, having never actually owned one of his albums, I must have always assumed that there was this awesome album that he released in the late eighties that contained all his songs, and that was an amazing first album! I think it really highlights how if you never investigate a topic, often your assumptions just keep applying until the true facts are revealed. However, discovering this fact about Alice Copper has started me wondering how many other facts there are of which I am unaware, due to my assumption that nothing of note happened prior to my birth!

27 Feb 2012 - Draw a pig icebreaker

Today I completed the second day of my training qualification upgrade, and during the introduction we each participated in an ice breaker. The facilitator asked us to find a blank piece of paper and draw a pig. Once all our pigs were drawn, the instructor interpreted what our particular drawings told us about our personalties. If we drew the pig at the top of the page, then we were optimists, in the centre, realists, or at the bottom, pessimists. If our pig was looking to the left of the page we were, traditional, friendly and good at remembering dates. If it was looking at you, you're considered direct, happy to discuss or argue a topic and keen to play the devil's advocate. Pigs looking to the right of the page indicated an innovative and active person, who is poor at remembering dates. A detailed pig drawing meant an analytical and cautious individual. A pig with four legs indicated a secure, to the point of being stubborn, individual. Less than four, meant an insecure person or one who is going through a period of change. Large ears meant good listeners, and the longer the tail, the more intelligence you are expected to exhibit.

I found this icebreaker fun and interesting, I mean can you really tell all that from the way in which I drew a pig? I think this test is not based in fact and created only to give a bit of fun in the training session. However, having said that, it was quite accurate for myself. My pig was in the centre, and I do consider myself to be a realist. It was looking forward and I am direct and happy to discuss or argue a topic. Also one of my sister's teachers in secondary school used to call her DOS, Daughter Of Satan, and I do stand up for my parents, so based on the nickname, I really am a devil's advocate. My pig had four legs, and I am quite secure in my ideas, to the point of stubbornness, having said that however, I am always willing to point out when others are wrong. My ears were pretty small, but I think that more indicates, not a lack of listening skills, but perhaps a lack of caring what some people have to say. The tail of my pig was quite long too, and I believe I am quite intelligent, hence why I am secure in my ideas and happy to tell others they are wrong. Overall I think this is a fun ice breaker, as long as you don't take it too seriously!

26 Feb 2012 - Seagulls in WWI trained to spot submarines

I again watched an episode of 'QI' on ABC iView, it is fast becoming a source for much of my learning. Today I learnt that during World War I (WWI) many ideas were thrown around as to how to curb the problem of the German U-boats. Sonar had not yet been discovered to be an effective way to seek out submarines, and so it was up to the British Navy to devise different ways in which to alert ships to the presence of an enemy U-boat. One of these methods was to use seagulls. The idea was that they could train seagulls by covering their own submarine periscopes with food, so that when they put their periscopes out of the water, the seagulls would flock to get the food. The eventual view was that over a period of time seagulls would then learn that if a periscope of any kind popped out of the water it would contain food. Therefore whenever they saw seagulls flocking to an area, the navy would know that a German submarine was in the vicinity.

In the words of Baldric from Blackadder, it was a very 'cunning plan'! In similar vain to Baldric's cunning plans, there were a few "small" flaws with the plan. The main flaw was that seagulls, despite their name, are actually not sea birds at all, and should more accurately be named, 'gulls'. Seagulls are land birds, that although are often found around coastal areas, but never venture out of sight of land. Unfortunately for the plan, the majority of U-boats are found in the middle of the ocean, far from any land that might contain a gull or two. To be fair to the British navy, I don't believe this plan ever made it off paper and into trials, but that fact that is was considered at all, highlights how desperate they were to reduce the impact of the German U-boats.

25 Feb 2012 - Garden gnome insured for one million pounds

After learning of the show 'QI' with Stephen Fry, I decided to watch an episode on ABC iView. The show is very entertaining, has at least four comedians each episode, discussing various topics and has many random facts. The one the piqued my interest tonight was about garden gnomes. In 1847 garden gnomes were first introduced to Britain, by Charles Isham. He imported the gnomes from Germany in the hopes that by having the statues of gnomes in his garden he would be able to attract real gnomes. Lampy is the only remaining garden gnome, of the original twenty-two which were imported by Charles Isham, is now on display in Lamport Hall (home of the Isham family in Northamptonshire, England), and insured for one million pounds.

Our family had a few garden gnomes when I was growing up, but I don't hold much affection for them, so if I had a garden gnome that was insured for that much money, I would be staging an abduction! I mean really, I know it may be the original garden gnome in Britain, but one million pounds is an incredible motive for stealing. A kleptomaniac would be motivated by less. Also it wouldn't exactly be a surprise that a garden gnome was stolen, people do it all the time. I have even heard stories where somebody has stolen a friend's gnome, travelled around the world with it, taken pictures of it in various locations, then sent the photos back to their friend! I also read in a Wikipedia article, that a French man was arrested on suspicion of stealing as many as 170 garden gnomes! In my opinion, stealing garden gnomes is not a new idea, they are not really that appealing and if you have a one worth a million pounds, you should really just arrange for it to be stolen.

24 Feb 2012 - Saudi Arabia imports sand and camels

I was talking to my Mum the other night and she was telling me about this show that she has been watching called 'QI'. Stephen Fry is the host, and he is one of my favourite British comedians. The show is about random facts, which I love! One of the facts from the show that she had been watching earlier that night, was that Saudi Arabia, a country that is full of sand, actually imports sand from Australia. They also have many camels, yet they also import camels from Australia. Why? Was the first questions that came to mind. It turns out that none of the sand in Saudi Arabia is able to be used for construction, so in order for them to build any structures, they require a different type of sand which they are able to import from Australia.

Additionally, their camels are used for carrying people or goods or for racing, so are not good for eating. This is why they import camels from Australia, because  Australian camels are much fatter and the meat on them is much better to eat. The reasons that they import these goods from Australia make sense, but it seems a little like us importing kangaroos or gum trees from another country. I suppose that could happen, if we say, found that our kangaroos were too wild to take our children to school in their pouches, so we decided to import some tamer kangaroos from say, France, in order to enable this great Australian fable to become truth for all the tourists!

23 Feb 2012 - Sweat like Bally-hoo definition

This evening I was reading an article about the Victorian Police getting a new uniform. As I got to the bottom of the article, there was a quote from Ken Lay, the Cheif Commissioner, who said in reference to the existing uniforms that, "we knew come summer these things just sweat like bally-hoo". This got me to wondering what this meant, I don't know what bally-hoo is or why they would be sweating. I know in Australia we have many different sayings such as, "I am so hungry I could eat the crutch out of a low flying duck", or, "It's better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick". I am used to hearing different sayings, although I am convinced sometimes that people just make them up, and that is what I thought this time about Ken Lay's saying, so I decided to dig deeper.

I thought that I should first try to discover what a bally-hoo might be, and it turns out that it is a small baitfish, which means it is a fish that is used as a lure, when fishing, to attract other bigger fish. Discovering what a bally-hoo was gave me a good impression of why they might be sweating. This conjured up images of little fish on hooks, sweating because they knew that they days were numbered, and that their continued existed depended on there being no predator in the water. This image however lead me to other thoughts, such as how do fish know they are sweating, because they live in the water, and so they couldn't possibly notice if they were sweating. I guess I understand what Ken meant by his saying, 'sweat like bally-hoo", but further searching, without results, has convinced me that he must have made the comment up because he thought it was amusing. However, I would be interested to know if anybody else has ever heard of this fishing saying.

The article was on The Age and I learnt about bally-hoo from Wikipedia.

22 Feb 2012 - Meaning of [sic]

Today I decided to purchase 'The Big Issue', I don't normally do this, but the lady who was selling it always smiles when I walk past, and today I actually had the money in my pocket, so I decided to purchase the magazine. Inside I found an article called 'War of the Words' about writers who have had public disagreements with each other, my favourite in the article was when Tibor Fischer said of Martin Amis' book 'Yellow Dog', "[It] isn't bad as in not very good or slightly disappointing. It's not-knowing-where-to-look bad . . . It's like your favourite uncle being caught in a school playground, masturbating." To which Amis' reply was, "Tibor Fischer is a creep and a wretch, Oh yeah, and a fat-arse." In terms of literary thought put into those two insults, I think it is fairly even!

Now although this is not what I learnt from the article, it is funny, and I love a good insult. I didn't in fact learn anything from the article, but it did spur me on to today's learning. It contained a quote from somebody else in the article, which had sic written, in brackets, in the middle of the quote. I have often seen this in articles and I have never known what it means. I always assumed it to be some literary term and because I am only a lowly blogger, not a literary writer, I would not be familiar with such amazing literary terms, although I think I could come up with a better insult than Martin Amis. I eventually turned to my good friend Dictionary.com, who revealed to me that sic means, thus or such. It is usually used in a sentence when quoting somebody, as it was in the article in 'The Big Issue', to denote that a mistake that is made, is not an error made by the writer of the article, but an error made by the person from whom the quote was originally taken. Armed with this new fact, I think I am now ready to go from my blogging into the world of literary writing, who am I kidding, I will just keep blogging!

Check out the meaning of sic and other meanings on Dictionary.com.

21 Feb 2012 - Genetically Grown Meat

Today I was reading The Age website and discovered an article about a $290,000 burger. My first thought was, "how on earth can Jamie Oliver justify charging that for something he cooked in his restaurant? I don't care if he cooks the thing naked, to live up to his Naked Chef title, surely nobody would want to pay that much for a meal!" After my mental anti-Oliver rant, I decided to read the article, and it turns out that the reason the burger is so expensive, is because the meat used to make it was artificially grown in a lab. This disturbed me more than the my earlier thought of Jamie Oliver cooking nude!

Apparently scientists are researching how to use stem cells to grow meat in a petri dish, instead of in a paddock, because in the next forty years our meat demand is going to outstrip our capacity to produce meat. Demand is expected to double and was are currently already using seventy percent of our agricultural land to farm meat. So it is expected that in the future we will be eating meat that has been grown in a lab rather than having grown up on a farm. I don't know about you, but I for one am still not comfortable eating chicken from a can, tuna from a can I have come to enjoy (although it has taken me many years, and it has to be cooked with something, not just eaten out of the can), but not chicken! So if I am still unable to eat chicken from a can, what chance do I have of ever being able to eat meat from a petri dish?

If you want to read the article, check out The Age online.

20 Feb 2012 - Fireman previously employed by Insurance Companies

I was reading an article on The Age website today about a 90 year old tour guide who was retiring from giving tours of the block arcade in Melbourne Central Business District. Within this article there were a number of facts, but the one that most caught my attention was the one regarding the formation of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB). It said that before the formation of the MFB, fire brigades were employed by insurance companies. This interested me, so I dug a little deeper and discovered a document on the history of the MFB. It turns out that until 1890, all fire fighters were employed privately, and buildings often had plaques donating which particular brigade defended that building. When a building caught fire, all the fire fighters would rush to the scene, then once they determined which brigade protected the building, the fire fighters in that brigade would try to put out the blaze, whilst the other fire fighters would set about trying to hinder their progress!

I found this to be incredible, fire fighters would actually try to prevent a fire from being put out quickly! I understand why insurance companies would employ men to fight fires, and even why they would encourage them to prolong fires, because it might convince people to buy protection from their insurance company, instead of the one that let their business burn down. However just imagine if other services, that would be logical for insurance companies to fund, such as police, had actually been allowed to be formed by insurance companies. We would have situations where police get called out to a home burglary, the first cop arrives at the scene and sees the burglar fleeing the scene. He notices that this isn't a house he is paid to protect, so he offers the guy a lift, to enable him to get away from the scene faster, and potentially get his bosses a new client. He might even leave his card for the burgled home, and offer the burglar a bribe not to rob houses that he protects. It is the exact same principle as the fire fighters trying to prolong the fire. I am just happy they our government wised up and decided to form the MFB, because if they hadn't and we had let our society go down the path where more services were funded by insurance companies and competed in that way, I don't think we would ever be able to safely leave our homes!

To read the original article, check out The Age, or check out the MFB History document on the MFB website.

19 Feb 2012 - The Inventor of Dynamite

Today I flicked on the television and a kids show came onto the screen. It was telling the audience about the Saxons, and it finished with saying that they invented Dynamite. At least that is what I heard before I switched onto the show that I was looking to watch. It struck me as odd at the time, to think that Dynamite was invented in the middle ages, it had always seemed to me to be a more modern invention. Eventually I decided to dig a little deeper and I discovered that it was actually discovered in the late 1800s, by Alfred Nobel, who is also the founder of the Nobel prizes. He had Dynamite patented in 1867, and despite having over 355 different patents, Dynamite was considered his most famous invention. I thought this was interesting because to my knowledge no population has referred to themselves as Saxons since the middle ages. So why would the television program tell it's audience that is was invented by Saxons, when it was invented many years after people had stopped referring to themselves as Saxons.

I think that I have worked out why, it is quite a tenuous link, however I will tell you and you can decide if you agree. Alfred Nobel was Swedish and he made his discovery whilst living in Germany. The Saxons were a major culture at the same time as the Vikings, and parts of what is now known as Germany, was many years ago known as Saxony. So I am thinking that, because modern day Scandinavian countries have close links with the race of people who were the original Vikings, and the discovery was made in a country that was previously occupied by the Saxons, the television show decided that since it was only kids watching it was acceptable to tell them that the Saxons invented Dynamite. It is either that or I totally misheard what was said on the television program this morning. Either way it gave me something to blog about, and a new found knowledge of the history of Dynamite!

I read up about Dynamite and Alfred Nobel on Wikipedia.

18 Feb 2012 - The Bravery of Airedale Terriers

I was watching a television show today called 'In Treatment' and one of the character's mentioned that the Airedale Terrier is the only breed of dog that has ever been knighted by the King of England for bravery. This intrigued me because generally only people get knighted, but also it is always a specific person, not a group of people, so this story didn't ring true. I decided to do a little digging and could not discover any reference, other than from this television series, to an Airedale Terrier ever being knighted for bravery. I did however find many references to Airedale Terriers and the fact that they are brave animals, also that many were used as messengers during World War I. 

There is one story in particular about an Airedale Terrier called Jack who ran through half a mile of swamp whilst being showered with artillery fire. When he arrived he had a broken leg and a broken jaw and he sadly passed away shortly after delivering his message. The message that he delivered saved his battalion and Jack was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for 'Gallantry in the Field'. I am thinking that perhaps the story of Jack is what this television show's writers got confused about when they added the line about the Airedale Terrier. It's funny how stories like this can get changed over the years, or misinterpreted to mean something else. In this case the Victoria Cross is a medal not a knighthood, and it was awarded to a specific dog, not a breed, but I guess they did get the breed of dog correct, they also managed to get the country correct, and the trait that Jack exhibited. So, I guess you have to give them points for getting part of the story correct.

If you would like to read about Airedale Terriers check out the dogtime website, it also has a picture of the Airedale Terrier, in case you can't imagine how they look.

17 Feb 2012 - Airlines can't always afford fuel

Today I was reading The Age online, and I discovered an article on Air Australia going into administration. It turns out that the reason was because a fuel company was owed too much money and so refused to refuel one of their aircraft. I found this astonishing, that an airline could get to the point where it was unable to afford to refuel their planes. Surely somebody must have known that this was occurring much earlier, than when it got to the point that they couldn't afford fuel for their planes. I also got to thinking about the airline industry in general and how many airline collapses there has been over the years.

My thoughts then compared the airline industry with the taxi industry, here are two industries, both transport passengers between destinations, however one industry is highly regulated and another is hardly regulated at all. When you catch a taxi, you pay based on how far the taxi travels, regardless of the number of passengers, if you can't afford the full distance, you get kicked out  earlier. This philosophy might be difficult to transfer to the airline industry because it costs a lot more to travel to a destination than in a taxi, so if only one individual is on the flight, then it would be a costly flight, and dropping you off early would require the use of a parachute. However, there must be some way in which the government can regulate, to a certain degree, airline ticket prices. Even if it is just to introduce a minimum ticket price, which companies cannot drop below, so that airlines can't undersell each other as much as they are currently, because this price war, in my opinion, is the main cause of these budget carriers going bust.

To read the article, check out The Age online.

16 Feb 2012 - Scaffolding as a learning description

Today I attended the first day of a course that I need to complete in order to upgrade my training qualification. During the course, the term scaffolding in reference to a learning strategy was mentioned. I had never heard this term used and was unsure what it meant exactly, so I inquired. It turns out that there is a scaffolding approach to learning, which the facilitator explained as, breaking down the topic into many pieces and then putting it back together to form the structure, just as you do when transporting scaffolding. Once explained it made sense using that word, because that is a fairly fundamental method of teaching a subject to somebody, breaking it down into sizeable chunks so that it is easier for the learner to grasp a topic, then adding more chunks until the overall subject is understood by the recipient. I found using this term interesting and it reminded me of another learning concept, that of using an analogy to explain something. Choosing a topic that is easier to understand in order to explain a more complex subject. 

My favourite analogy is one an economics lecturer used, where he described the difference between the European economy and the American economy by describing teenagers who purchased cars. The first teenager was careful never to scratch or dent his car, so eventually was able to upgrade his car, by trading it in and adding his savings, to purchase a newer one. He continued to do this until he finally had a brand new car, this teenager was the American economy. Europe was the teenage who crashed his car and wrote it off and had to buy another older car using his savings but without the original car to trade in to add more value. He then crashed it again and had to purchase another older car and so when the first teenager had a brand new car he was still driving and old bomb of a car. The car crashes were references to the two world wars in which the European economy was "written off". It was meant to highlight, that because America had not been affected by the world wars in the same way as fighting never reached their country to disrupt it, it was able to keep it's economy in much better shape than Europe. The only way that Europe saw to compete with the American economy was to draw themselves together into the European Union. The analogy here, was one of many teenagers (European countries), who had crashed their cars, pooling their savings together to buy a new car. I like to use analogies to describe concepts and I really liked that by using the word scaffolding to describe a learning strategy, you are using a learning strategy to describe a learning strategy.

15 Feb 2012 - Melbourne fourth most student friendly city

Today I was reading The Age online and I discovered that in a recent poll, Melbourne was deemed to be the fourth most student friendly city in the world, just behind Paris, London and Boston. The ranking was based on 12 key criteria, including quality of living, number of internationally ranked universities, proportion of international students and affordability. Melbourne was awarded 95 out of a possible 100 for quality of living, however that quality comes at a high price because Melbourne was only scored 28 out of a possible 100 for affordability. This just didn't seem right to me and made me think that what they were basing affordability on were obviously not the things on which students would base affordability.

I remember my students days and I managed to get drunk at least once every week for only ten dollars. I know that was ten years ago, but even with Consumer Price Index (CPI) increases, that couldn't be more than around fifteen dollars today. How can anybody consider that to be unaffordable? I then realised that the low score was aimed at cost of living factors such as rent, food and other such things. You know the kind of thing parents might be looking for when they send their kids to university. It is obviously the cheap price for student drinks which managed to get us most of the 28 points out of 100. This made sense to me and as I read further it said that if Melbourne was more affordable it would surpass even Paris as the most student friendly city. I am assuming that is because the savings in rent would then enable students to get drunk at least twice a week!

To read the original article check out The Age website.

14 Feb 2012 - Expensive Prisoners

I was discussing with a work colleague today, who used to work for the department of corrections, how our prison system works. This is an area that I had never really thought about the costs to the state of keeping prisoners. I have always thought in terms of, you commit a crime, you deserve to go to prison. Sometimes I have heard about a crime and thought, wow that was a light sentence for the crime that was committed. However, overall I try to keep in mind that you never get all the facts of a case from the media, they generally are just trying to sell newspapers, so I prefer to just trust that our judges know what they are doing and tend not to speculate on the subject. My discussion today however really highlighted to me the disincentive that judges are faced with when deciding to put someone in prison, and highlighted why in some cases it might be better to reduce a sentence, or replace it with community service. My colleague told me that it costs approximately $80,000 a year to maintain one prisoner, a figure I checked on the department of justice website, which estimated the average cost at approximately $94,000 annually per prisoner.

Taking these figures into consideration and considering we have nearly 5,000 prisoners in institutions across the state, it costs nearly $470 million a year to maintain our prison system. None of the 5,000 prisoners are contributing to society in any way, so it is not like any of them are giving back to the community or the State, they are a pure cost. I can see why a judge might wish to be more lenient in some cases where, yes, somebody may have committed a crime, but they are repentant, a first offender, and don't pose a threat to public safety. In these sorts of cases, giving them something like community service is a great option because they are contributing to the community performing tasks that need doing usually, and they can probably still hold down full time employment, so are contributing to taxes which are keep other criminals housed where they belong. Now I am not saying that we need to be more lenient on prisoners to reduce costs, but I think that people need to keep this in mind when judging how unfair we consider certain sentences. Also I think that we need to trust that our judges are doing a very difficult job in balancing what is best for the individual who committed the crime, what is best for our society and the potential costs to our society of housing so many prisoners who are not contributing.

The cost figures came from the Victorian Department of Justice website.

13 Feb 2012 - Bombing of Dresden

Today I learned about the bombing of Dresden, but additionally that some coincidences are spooky! I was speaking to some work colleagues this morning and somehow we got onto the topic of the bombing of Dresden during  world war two, and how many people died during the raid. My work colleague was unsure of the exact figures, but I did some research when I got home and Dresden is a town in Germany about 160 kilometres south of Berlin. During world war two this town had over 2500 tons of high explosives dumped on it in a single night, almost 90 percent of the inner city's 28,000 homes were destroyed, as well as 22 hospitals. At the time the Nazi's published that as many as 250,000 people died, modern estimates refute this and put the figure at around 135,00 deaths from the raid. I always try to keep in mind that it is the victors who write the histories and so try not to dismiss a claim from someone just because I may happen to disagree with their regime. However, regardless of whether the Nazi's inflated the figure or not, to put this bombing in perspective, the bombing of Hiroshima, of which much is publicised, killed 70,000 people, basically half, of the lowest estimate of those killed in the bombing of Dresden, and yet until today I had never even heard of this historic event, despite having researched a great deal about world war two.

Not knowing about this terrible event shocked me a little, but what surprised me more, was that upon hearing about this at work I then came home, and I glanced at a book that I have in my book shelf. I thought to myself, why have I never read this book, it is called 365 and contains historical stories for each day of the year, it would have provided me with great ideas of things to learn and blog about, but I haven't even picked it up since I started blogging! So I decided to take a quick peak and turned to the page for the 13th of Feb. You will never guess what happened on the night of the 13th of Feb 1945, or perhaps you might because I have really given it away already! You guessed it, the bombing of Dresden occurred on 13th of Feb 1945! I was a little spooked, what are the chances that I will be told about a battle for the first time on the date that it had actually occurred. My second thought was that maybe he knew that it had occurred on this day and that is why it was on his mind, but when I checked with him the next day, he had no idea exactly when it had occurred just that it was sometime during world war two. This event is going in the spooky fact file, along with the time when I dreamed that I was doing my washing, and when I pulled it out of the machine, a white sock was wrapped around the leg of my jeans, only to wake up and and recall that I had washing in the machine, and when I pulled it out, there was a white sock wrapped around the leg of my jeans. These two spooky events are the the stuff of legends!

12 Feb 2012 - North Korean corruption

I was having some drinks with my extended family and having a chat with one of my relations, who has recently returned from South Korea. Whilst he was there he had learned a great deal about the political situation between North and South Korea, and as I have always been intrigued by North Korea but have never really known much about the country, except obviously what I learnt from the movie "Team America", I was happy that my relation had a bit of knowledge on the subject. He was telling me about the level of corruption in North Korea, how they traffic drugs and counterfeit foreign currency and how this crime is basically sanctioned by the government. I had always known that the country was very autocratic and my assumptions were, that based on this autocracy the people had very little freedom. This conversation further confirmed my thoughts in this area but I guess what I didn't realise was the level of their corruption, and that organised crime was apparently ignored if not encouraged by their government.

I did a further Google search which uncovered many websites with information outlining North Korean stories of corruption. One website was a newspaper article about a poll completed late last year which concluded that North Korea was considered to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Number one on the list was considered to be the least corrupt country, Australia was number eight and North Korea rated 182 on the list. All this got me to thinking that even though Australia may have issues with corruption at some levels and Victoria is having trouble getting an anti-corruption task force up and running, at least we are 174 rankings less corrupt that North Korea!

The corruption poll article was on the Daily Mail website.

11 Feb 2012 - The Taj Mahal is a tomb

I was having dinner and drinks with friends of mine tonight and we were discussing their recent trip to India and how they visited the Taj Mahal. I have always loved this building and it is a place that I would love to visit, but I have never really known a great deal of detail about it. My friends were telling me that it was originally built as a tomb for one of the past sultan's wives. This surprised me because I had never imagined that the Taj Mahal would have been built for this purpose. Unlike in Egypt where all the of the Pharaohs built amazing tombs to mark their graves, I had always thought the Egyptians were the only race that went to such an effort. I had visited burial mounds in Scotland where ancient civilisations had built rock domes, called cairns, to mark the graves of people who passed, however these were never on the same scale as the pyramids. This got me to thinking about how much effort people put into their tombs many years ago and how we differ these days.

I mean you think of all the space taken up by the Pyramids or the Taj Mahal, which marked the graves of individuals, or perhaps a couple of people and then you think of the urn of ashes that some people choose, there is a rather large discrepancy. Imagine if everyone built such lavish tombs who could afford it these days, there would be no space left in the world. I am just conjuring up images of the type of tombs that people who have means might choose to build, Steve Jobs would have built a giant apple with a bite taken out of the side, Bill Gates I guess would just have a giant window somewhere. Overall I am glad that we don't build lavish tombs anymore because in this day and age where all the celebrities are trying to outdo each other, I think our earth would just be covered with a whole bunch of monuments that we don't need, especially considering we already have more celebrities than we need!

10 Feb 2012 - Why mix lemon or lime with Corona beers

Today I went for an after work drink again and I was speaking to one of my friends who joined me. He was telling me the reason why lemon or lime wedges were initially put into Corona beers. He said that originally in Mexico they recycled all the bottles but didn't necessarily clean them properly, so bar tenders started to put lemon or lime wedges in the top of the bottle so that patrons could use it to disinfect the bottle's rim before drinking the beer. I found this interesting, so I did a little further research, via Google, into whether or not this was true. My Google search brought me to many different websites, all of which had differing opinions on the history of lemon/lime and Corona. One of the theories agreed with my friend's that it was used to sanitise the bottles, by wiping the lip with the citrus juice. Another was that it was all a marketing ploy, which is why you see lime wedges in advertisements for Corona. 

My favourite theory however, and the one that I am going to adopt as the real reason when I tell the story, is that it is used to keep the flies out. The story goes, that patrons complained about the flies hovering around their beers but when the bartenders sprayed the fly spray, they complained about that too, saying that is ruined the flavour of the beer by having the fly spray used nearby. So the bartenders started by putting a lemon or lime wedge in the top of the beers to keep the flies away instead of using the fly spray. It was only ever intended to sit in the top of the bottle, and to be removed when a patron wanted to take a sip, then replaced again after each sip. However tourists to the area started to push the lime or lemon into the beer and drink it that way, which is how the tradition started. I have worked in hospitality and have solved problems for patrons myself, only to have them complain about the solution, so the fly theory rings true to me. Also I have seen and heard many stories about tourists misinterpreting local customs, and I am probably guilty of it myself! Overall these reasons make the fly theory my favourite and the one I see as most realistic.

If you want to read about the Corona and lemon or lime theories, check out the site I found most useful the Examiner website.

9 Feb 2012 - Chipping your arm to unlock you house

Tonight I was having an after work drink with a friend of mine and she joked about how she would love to have a chip in her arm for touch and go payments, she could simply swipe her arm against the sensor, rather than having to swipe the card and enter a pin. After voicing this, the waitress replied, "oh you mean like that guy who got a chip put in his arm to open his car and house." I had never heard of this guy, so when I got home I Googled him. I eventually found an article on the Age website about him. It turns out he is a Melbourne man and back in 2008, he modified his house and had a chip inserted into his arm so that he could unlock his house by scanning his arm on the sensor at the door. This way he didn't have to worry about forgetting his keys anymore.

I admit, I have forgotten my keys from time to time, it is annoying, but I don't think it is annoying enough to go to the extent of chipping myself, and upgrading my security at home to allow the chip to work in my locks. That must be incredibly expensive to organise. He says that he modified most of the off the shelf equipment himself, so it only cost a few thousand dollars to implant his arm and modify his house, but I don't have that kind of expertise, so it would cost me a mint I am sure. Not to mention the fact that after I spend all this money, I open myself to burglars being forced to cut off my arm in order to  rob my house. I really don't need that added stress in my life! I'd rather just throw them my keys and let them do their worst. It is much better than having to race to emergency so they can treat your removed limb, all the while knowing that you will be coming home to a burgled house!

The original article was in The Age.

8 Feb 2012 - Whale Sharks can live for 70 years

I was reading an article in The Age today about a whale shark that was found dead in waters near Pakistan. The whale shark weighed seven tonnes and was ten metres long. At the bottom of the article there were some Big Fish Facts which stated that whale sharks on average weight up to twenty tonnes and can be twelve metres or more long. I saw the picture of the whale shark that had been discovered in the article, and it looked huge. To think this one is really only a smaller whale shark makes me not want to go swimming at the beach! I mean what do they usually eat in order to put on that much weight, I bet surfers and snorkelers make up a huge percentage of their diet. It turns out after further read that I am wrong, the whale sharks are actually filter feeding sharks mainly, which means they eat plankton (microscopic animals and plants) and are not hunting for swimmers. Still I might be a little careful in case they change their diet. Judging from their reported size I should be able to see them coming!

All of this however were things that I learnt today, but the thing that most surprised me, after a further Google search, was that whale sharks can live up to 70 years of age. I found this surprising because, I didn't think that fish lived that long! I know that some turtles have long life spans (I know this because even once you flush them down the toilet by accident, they turn into mutants and fight crime, I think I learned it in a documentary), but I had no idea that any sharks lived that long. It turns out the whale sharks are actually related more to whales, of which some species can live for over 100 years, than to sharks, which generally live between 20-30 years. I am glad that as well as life span, that whale sharks follow whale's eating habits, because if they did chase humans, that would be a long time to be avoiding the same shark.

Check out the original article for a picture of the shark in The Age or the further research on Wikipedia.

7 Feb 2012 - Diamond coated transplants

I was reading an article in The Age today about how diamonds could be the key to developing bionic eyes. The article said that is takes 3.3 billion years for nature to create a diamond, but physics professor Steven Prawer is able to make them in 5 days, by cooking them in the microwave. My first image was of Prawer running to the microwave to stop his wife from trying to defrost dinner because his diamond was not done yet. After that thought passed I decided to be amazed at how somebody thought to try doing this in the first place. However this is just side speculation because what I actually learnt today was that surgeons who replace heart values or hips, among other things, coat the item that they are installing with a diamond coating because it has a very low rejection rate and is quite durable. This also amazed me and got me thinking of the versatile use of a girl's jewelry. It can be a pretty ornament for years, but if she becomes a pensioner who is a little low on cash, she can then grind it down and use it to coat her replacement hip.

This topic further reminded about those warning emails that went around years ago and possibly still do now. It was usually told from the first person perspective about how this person landed in a foreign country and met somebody there who took them out to a great bar where they had an amazing night of fun, only to wake up the next morning in a bath of ice with their kidneys removed. These thoughts combined got me to thinking that using diamond coating on hip replacements must have been a well kept secret up until The Age revealed it this morning, because if it hadn't been a secret, then there would have surely been warning emails about people waking up with their hips missing. However now that the secret is revealed, you better pass the word that anyone who has had a hip replacement and travels to a foreign country should be wary, or they might wake up in a bath of ice with their hips and kidneys missing!

The article was in The Age.

6 Feb 2012 - History of brown paper bags and booze

I was watching 'The Wire' tonight and there was an interesting story at the end of one of the episodes about why alcohol was packaged in brown paper, and why people conceal their booze in a brown paper bag when consuming it on the streets. It was told that when drinking on the street was made illegal, there was a large problem in many cities because people didn't have backyards and so would congregate on the streets in the evenings to have a drink in the cool evening breeze. Usually the drink being consumed was alcohol and even once it was made illegal people still flouted this law and many individuals were arrested for the offence. In order to reach a compromise (and avoid being put in jail) people started to drink their drinks on the streets outside their house concealed in a brown paper bag so that the police could turn a blind eye to the behaviour, as the paper bag removed the visible sign that the individual was drinking alcohol on the street. This has led to the tradition of people using brown paper bags to package alcohol because people would so often request it to assist in concealing their street drinking, that it became standard for shops to package it this way.

I was unable to back this story up with any hard evidence but much like the "Buckley's and none" saying (see post of 25 Jan 2012), of which there are two plausible reasons, this story is also quite plausible, and, from my quick internet search, believed by many to be the truth. So I have decided to include this as something new that I learned today, partly because I have discovered little else of interest today, but mainly because it is plausible and I like to think that this is the reason for the link between brown paper bags and booze! My further justification is that when I was travelling around Europe I was told many stories of how certain sayings came into existence and I have accepted these as truth for the same reason of their plausibility and because I can't really be bother determining if they are 100 percent accurate. Maybe the guy who determined that the duck's quack actually does echo, although only faintly (see post of 31 Jan 2012), is looking for a new project, and he can verify this and other sayings as accurate. However, I am happy to accept the story as fact without further evidence, I may be proved wrong at a later date, but such is life!

5 Feb 2012 - Margaret Thatcher Resigned

I went to see 'The Iron Lady' the other day and Meryl Streep did an amazing job playing Margaret Thatcher. The film really only gave a brief summary of her life, but it did cover all of the major events of her time as Prime Minister of Britain. I never realised that her popularity waxed and waned so much over her terms as Prime Minister. I suppose I should not be surprised that there were times that she was extremely popular, because she did manage to stay in office for over 11 years. What I had never realised until today was that she was challenged for leadership towards the end of her final term and that she resigned rather than face the challenge. I had always assumed that she must have been voted out due to the public losing faith in her because of her unpopular decisions, I didn't realise that her party had also lost faith in her.

I had always had the opinion that she was somebody who lead Britain and made decisions based on what she believed was right for the country, not on what was popular at the time. The film reinforced this view of her to me but it also portrayed that her party did not always agree with her opinions and many times she did not have their full support, which I guess is proved by the fact that towards the end, they tried to remove her as leader. The movie really got me to thinking about politics and how our systems of government work. We incentivise politicians to do the popular thing instead of the right thing, because we will reward them with reelection if they do the popular thing, however sometimes the unpopular thing is right and for a politician to decide to embark on this course may cost them reelection. I wonder how often we actually miss opportunities to improve our country because the thing that is right, is not done because it is not popular?

4 Feb 2012 - How trains stay on the tracks

I was talking to a friend of mine today and he was telling me how he may have found himself a new idol, Richard Feynman. I have never heard of him but my friend was explaining that he is a Physicist but is now deceased. He was telling me about these YouTube clips featuring Feynman describing various scientific concepts. One that intrigued my friend, and me when he told me, was how trains stay on their tracks. I had honestly never really thought about the why, I had just taken it for a given that they did. When my friend asked me to think of why, I didn't really have an explanation. So he told me what he had always thought was that it was the lip of the wheel, that sits below the track, that ensures that the train does not deviate from it's set path. This seemed reasonable to me, but after further discussion and watching the YouTube clip I discovered that it is much more involved than that!

Feynman describes the design of the train wheels and how they are tapered so that the outside of the wheel is smaller in diameter than the inside part which is closer to the train body and how both wheels are connected by a steel rod. This wheel design ensures that if a train starts to deviate from the track, the wheels will move so that the deviating wheel it is doing a larger rotation than the opposite wheel, thus pushing the train back into place. To help visualise this, imagine that you have small wheels on one side of a toy car and larger wheels on the other side. When you push the toy car, it will turn to the side of the smaller wheels. This is the same with the train, if it is deviating from the track then it's moving the tapered parts of the wheels so that the side that is deviating is taking a bigger rotation, which then means the other side is taking a smaller rotation. This forces the whole train to  move back towards the smaller rotation and therefore back on track. The lip on the wheel is only a back up for if the tapered wheels fail. This wheel design also assists the train to turn corners. When the track bends in a certain direction the centrifugal force (for an explanation of this, see my 1 Feb 2012 post) pushes the train away from the direction the train is turning, which shifts the outer wheels so that they are doing a larger rotation, thus assissting the train to turn in the direction of the bend.

To watch the clip, check out YouTube.

3 Feb 2012 - Martin Luther's Lutherans

Over the years I have heard the name Lutherans used to describe a branch of Christianity but I never knew anything about their teachings as opposed to other religions. I still don't know much about their teachings and am not that interested to be honest, but today I was having a discussion with a friend of mine from work and I am not sure how we got onto the topic but her was telling me about Martin Luther, who founded the Lutheran religion. He said that he was a monk that was dissatisfied with the ways of the Catholic Church, mainly their collection of money to absolve people from their sins, and their decadence in the spending of this money, and so he formed his own religion. I thought this was all very interesting because I have always been intrigued as to why so many different religions exist in the world and how and why each of them has been founded.

I did some further research online about Martin Luther and verified everything that my friend told me. He was an Augustinian friar who visited Rome in 1510 and afterwards became dissatisfied with the majority of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Afterwards he wrote a series of pamphlets and the '95 Theses'. These writings spread quickly throughout Europe and formed the basis of the Lutheran religion. In 1521 he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church at which time he fled and went into hiding. Luther was a German priest and in 1534 he published a translated version of 'The Bible' in German, as he believed that all followers should be able to read the bible in their own language. Originally the term Lutheran was meant as a derogatory term used  by the Roman Catholic Church to describe Luther's followers. However later Luther's followers adopted this name themselves to describe their particular branch of religion. Today Lutherans are a major branch of the Christian religion in many countries around the world.

I read about Martin Luther on BBC History and Wikipedia, also on Lutherans on Wikipedia.

2 Feb 2012 - Catholic means universal

Today I was in a meeting and the person presenting used catholic in a sentence, he said the product was fairly catholic. I assumed that it was some sort of pun or joke, which I didn't get and I wasn't really that interested in clarifying. However another person in the grouped questioned his use of the word catholic and he seemed surprised that she had not heard the word used in this fashion. He clarified that he meant the product was fairly generic, another person in the group backed up his use of the word and we moved on. However this intrigued me as I had only heard of the word catholic relating to religion, so I did a little Googling!

Dictionary.com backed up the definition of this word as meaning universal or generic. I also found a Wikipedia article and it mentioned that the word catholic was derived from the Latin word catholicus, meaning universal. The reason that the word is associated with religion is because the Christian Church adopted the word catholic to describe themselves as being the universal and most extensive religion in the world early in the second century. Previously I had only ever heard the word used to denote a person of Christian faith associated with the Roman Catholic Church. Until today I had always thought the word had been created to describe the Roman Catholics as a branch of religion within the Christian faith, just as there are Protestants and Anglicans who are also of Christian faith. However I realise now that the word existed before the inception of the Roman Catholic Church and was initially adopted by all Christians to describe the scope of their religion. Presumably that is the same reason the the Roman Catholic Church adopted the word formally into their name. I guess it shows that, as the Christian faith is the most extensive in the world, the Roman Catholics are the most extensive group within the Christian faith.

If you want to read the definition, try Dictionary.com or to read more about the word's history and use check out Wikipedia.

1 Feb 2012 - Centrifugal force

I have always been interested in how planes are able to stay in the air and I finally found a definition that I could understand by reading the Michael Crichton book "Airframe". This however did not explain how a helicopter managed to stay in the air, and after reading the article yesterday I became curious and decided to investigate today. I read a Wiki answers article on helicopters and I was utterly confused by the overly technical description and the fact that it assumed you knew the basics of aerodynamics. However I did stumble across the term centrifugal force in the article. Over the years I have attributed many incidents to the activities of the centrifugal force (which I had always pronounced cent-ral-fugal force). Activities such as, why the train was late or why my work colleague was unable to find their pen. To be honest, I had no idea what centrifugal force was or how it related to the world. That was until today when I decided to Google it!

It turns out that the Wikipedia article on centrifugal force is ridiculously technical and the only thing that I could interpret into real terms was the Latin meaning of centrifugal (centrum, meaning "centre" and fugere, meaning "to flee"). 'To flee the centre', was my first clue, but it didn't really mean anything, much like the rest of the article! I needed an example, which was why I turned to my old friend dictionary.com! The definition was "A force that tends to move objects away from the centre in a system undergoing circular motion". Again this was not clear enough in real terms, but there was also an example and it made me think of the fun game we used to play as kids, called corners! When you are sitting in the back seat of a car and the car goes around a roundabout, the passengers are thrown to the opposite side, this is because of the centrifugal force. Additionally when you have a bucket full of water and you spin around and hold the bucket out at arms length, the centrifugal force is what keeps the water from spilling out of the bucket (if you have never tried this, you should, it's fun). Finally I understand the meaning of centrifugal force! I will still use the term facetiously for explanations of random events, but now I will be doing it using the correct pronunciation and with knowledge of the real definition!

The technical article was on Wikipedia and the not as technical one was on dictionary.com.

31 Jan 2012 - Helicopters struggle on hot days

Today I was reading an article in The Age about the new helipad at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. It said that the helipad built on the roof of the new hospital was insufficient for the hospitals needs, because on hot days (days above 30 degrees Celsius), helicopters may not be able to take off safely from the roof due to the air being too thin. Now I will admit that I know very little about helicopters and their abilities to take off, because I never did get around to properly studying geography, but surely they have worked out a way to hot weather proof them? It turns out that they haven't. A Google search showed me that helicopters in Afghanistan have also crashed due to the same reasons, in fact the article I read in USA Today about the Afghanistan crashes mentions that it is just a fact of life that helicopters are accident prone! 

I ask myself, 'Is nobody out there studying how to improve the safety of helicopters? Is it because it would be too expensive to research improved safety, when they work most of the time?' It shouldn't be a money issue because we have money to commission a study into whether a duck's quack actually does echo (A few years ago I read an article about a study that confirmed that a duck's quack does echo, although it is hard to hear due to quality of the original quack), so surely we can spend some money on determining how to improve helicopters to make them less accident prone! Overall I guess I just hope that there is actually someone out there looking into improving the safety of helicopters. I would do it myself, but as you read earlier, I think gravity is covered by studying geography, so I may not be the best candidate!

Helicopter articles were in The Age and USA Today.