Don't look back now, it's the Popo!

So the other night I got pulled over by the police for the first time. I think maybe what caught their attention were the sequential loops I did around a particular round-a-bout, or as they put it: failure to indicate while leaving. I even managed to have 4 people witness me; being Rob, Cheyne, Shaun and Josh. I will try not to whine and moan about how I was in empty and undeveloped residential streets at 12:30 in the morning... the fact is I was 16k's over the limit, and had no p-plates on. And oh SNAP that will be $250 thankyou.

What I find hilarious though is that they (The Police, Officer Johnson) even felt it in their call of duty to refer to me as a 'Hoon'. For those of you not familiar with the term, a hoon may be defined as a show off or an individual engaged on reckless activity. The following conversation then took place.

Officer: "Just to let you boys know, we're going to be hitting this area hard to target you hoons, so be mindful in future. Thanks guys, now have a good night."

*Insert deafly silence interrupted by the faint chirping of crickets here*.

Oh no, no, no, no, thankyou officer! You see the thing is I currently drive a 2003 model Kia Carnival. Make no mistake, picking up in this 7-seater family van is an absolute treat and makes for a very smooth ride indeed, however, as for major burns out, drag racing, dough nuts and any other wikid sick terminology I can throw in it leaves a lot to be desired for.

So as I drove away with the acceleration of a retarded snail, it was at this point our over stimulated post Transformer movie imaginations boiled over. We subsequently witnessed the police car morph loudly into a giant mechanoid alien and run off into the distance.

Ahhh, happy times.

It's Over

Well, it's finally over. See that empty desk in the lower right hand corner of the picture? Thats gonna be my empty desk as I leave the exam early.

Thats right, no need to study hard for my upcoming exams any longer. It seems that the increasing competitiveness of university entrance has finally gifted us with High-Tech Cheating.

According to this article all I have to do to ace my exams is fumble around for a spare few thousand dollars to hire some Chinese "guns" to do the work for me. Imagine the carnage of a few muscular Asian 'gun men' using their ancient martial art of Lei Tai to run into your exam room and beat answers out of weeping academics with chain whips. Far from this, however, these guys actually hide in a van outside schools where "a student in the examination hall used a wireless microphone to read out the questions and received the answers from the van".

Awesome.

But how does one simply carry a wireless microphone into an exam? Well, "'cheating shoes' with transmitting and reception ability" allow you to read out the questions into a small microphone. Surely they could have been a little more imaginative with their merchandise? We all know Agent 86 from Get Smart used the old phone-in-a-shoe trick to overcome the plans of the evil Chaos agents, and this was back in 1965. Personally I'm gonna hold off until they bring out microphone implanted skateboards, or at least something equally less obvious to take in with me.

So good in fact are these Chinese masterminds, they have even began almost boasting to the police "adding that they (the shoes)-- along with cheating wallets and hats -- had proved very popular this year". Yeah, nothing beats committing a crime than committing a crime that brings monetary gain. Although there is the opportunity cost of spending the next 12 months in a Chinese prison to weight up.

Ahhh exams... so glad I don't have to worry bout them for another year after this.

Oh and also be mindful if you ever need to search the word 'exam' in google images, the first few entries involve rectal and testicular exams... maybe not the type of exams you'll need cheating hats and wallets for.

Beros.

Imagine that.

Imagine your at a beach with some friends.

This is a very popular beach which during the summer is always full of people.

Suppose this beach is of limited length, and the all people are evenly distributed along it.
There are two ice cream sellers on this beach and each day they decide where along the beach they should set up their stall to get the most customers. Now if you think this over for long enough you will realise that eventually the ice cream sellers set up right next to each other in the middle, splitting the total customers in half.

But this sucks for you, clearly if they two stalls are 1/3 of the way in on either side they will still have the same amount of business but the you and your friends don't have nearly as far to walk.

Free markets lose man. The best ideas come from seeing whats wrong with something and finding something better. I can't wait for the next big economic idea, hopefully it will deal with equality in some way.

Yeah anyway,
I know I haven't blogged in a while, mostly because Sean hasn't nagged me enough... but this will be a self inspired blog. Really I should be studying for exams next week but they still seem light years away.

taka's anyone?

its just cool

May it be documented that this site is awesome:

http://www.shinybinary.com/art.html

The squelch of nations

It's OK.
If your anything like me, after seeing the picture to this post your probably not going to read pass the next couple of sentences. You and I already feel guilty enough for not 'doing our bit' to help out developing nations. Truthfully, those tiny African children you see on world vision commercials make me feel a little too uncomfortable and ashamed to actually dial the number. (and next time you see the ads take note of how much water from the town well actually makes it into his container).

But some of the real answers as to why the poorest nations live in perpetual poverty is not because you and I don't give enough or even because we don't go to the extreme of flying over and volunteering our time. Sometimes it's even better simply to donate the cost of the airfare than visiting just to hug children and paint orphanages (who's benefit is that for yours or theirs?).

And no, its definitely not because they live in the desert and therefore have no resources.

Did you know though that in Ethiopia starting a business requires a bank deposit of 18 years worth of average income, upon which the account is then frozen? Or maybe you want to buy some land for a factory in Nigeria? No problem... all you need to do is hold for the mandatory 21 process to be completed, roughly equivalent to 274 days waiting time! Oh and don't forget to deduct the 27% of the purchase price taken in fees by the government.

In an effort to contain blistering levels of unemployment some governments make it so hard to sack an employee that most business simply don't bother hiring anyone in the first place. "In Burkina Faso, for instance, to sack someone an employer must first re-train him, place him in another job and pay a lump sum equivalent of 18 months salary"¹. 90% of the people in this nation are still peasants.

It's not hard to see why these guys do it tough when there little or no incentives for people to start producing even the most basic necessities for themselves and their nation. I do realise though that I'm probably over simplifying such a complex issue like poverty. A truck load of other factors influence what separates rich from poor. The cool thing about economics, however, is that it enables an ability for change to be made on a much broader scale than say adopting an orphan.You can read the full world bank report here.

Learn how to swim

One of the more interesting things about working at a pool is that you have to deal with people at the two extreme ends of their life, they're either really young or really old. Words cannot describe the infinite joy in being dumped with a group of 5 two year olds and given the task of introducing them to the wonders of this new aquatic environment, all the while making sure they don't drown in the pool water let alone their own tears. The radiant reflection of over enthusiastic parents keen for their child to become the next Ian Thorpe all but makes the 100 or so dollars they had to shell out for some 18 year old to show their kid how to blow bubbles in water all the more worthwhile. (apologies, you can breath now, sentence over)

It is rather fascinating seeing these young ones every week gain more independence. Growing at a faster and faster rate as they discover and develop their new found abilities. However, I'm not trying to do a rendition of Robert Winston's 'The Human Body', it just recently occurred to me that in a culture obsessed with youth, prosperity and the continual search for the holy grail it must be difficult knowing that you are losing the ability to develop. People physically and mentally diminish. Like when a 90 year old man no longer has the capacity to move his right arm and leg and is dependent on others for all the most basics things such as walking, let alone being able to go swimming.

I wonder what keeps people going who have nothing left, not even their own mental sanity? Especially in the knowledge that in the future they will keep on losing even more function. Although very bleak, economics defines that when the marginal cost of living exceeds that of the perceived benefits of dying, then utility will be maximised if you were to die. My guess is that if this were true there would be a great deal less elderly folk around today. Rationality isn't always the absolute truth, and can't always give the most correct and 'logical' answer. There has to be something that humans cling on to, whether it be friends, community or faith it doesn't matter.

Mermaid aren't hot

The following grossly paraphrased and out of context quote was over heard by Sean, Katie and myself.

"You should have seen Ariel last night... what a slut."

The subsequent mermaid references were inevitable... that slurry just couldn't keep her legs closed.

This led to a rather heated debate, it is quite common for men to find Mermaids attractive. Yeah I know, this probably isn't the least bit shocking to you, but seriously consider the anatomy of a mermaid. It doesn't take long before you realise that whichever way you look at it they're nothing more than a half human half fish hybrid mutant.
This my friends is termed: Bestiality

If you still don't think this is gross, just conjure up an image of a 'reverse mermaid'. Still being a half human half fish technically qualifies this as still being a mermaid, only this creature of the sea is defiantly not fit for human consumption.

This, however, is beside the point. Let's assume for a moment that we do in fact live in world were mermaids actually do exist, and that as the Disney films would have us believe they are all charmingly attractive beings who dwell in an ancient under water utopia.

Well, I'm happy to inform you that this is true!... At least for the first assumption, the second is rather more subjective.


Yeah, its a real mermaid discovered by a fisherman in China.
For the full story and a full body shot click here.