Tuesday, November 03, 2009

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Australia needs a large inland city. Something other than Canberra.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

To Wit

'Impertinent' is a term that has come to encompass the opposite of its original, etymological intent.

It literally means 'not pertinent' or 'not relevant'. Usually when people say it, they mean the later sense of 'rudely bold'.

This later meaning is a designation of arbitrary irrelevance, namely "you have done something I consider beyond your station and I am not impressed". Given the nature of autocrats, something that they call impertinent is often the most pertinent thing you could have said.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

http://www.imaginaryfoundation.com

because I find it interesting.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Prescient Vision for the day:

I will go to my high school reunion wearing an eyepatch, so that I can tell bullshit stories about how it happened fighting Somali pirates or the like. Then I will arrive, and one of my former classmates will actually have lost an eye, or a leg, or something and I will feel like a total dickhead.

I just found this amusing for a broadsheet newspaper...


And maybe a bit of a cry for help.

Monday, October 12, 2009

If we don't have it yet, we need it now.

T-shirts that say:

KANYE WAS RIGHT

(About Beyonce being robbed and, i 'spose, about George Bush hating black people, but not about Kanye's new album being that great. Or it taking much talent to just sing over the top of Daft Punk.)

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Now this is Annie...

Update: Egads, what a garbled sentence this was. Voice recognition, you need a proofing function.


Now this is Annie teached me in the grain rices but prunes stuffs olives like the ones that has the anchovies stuffing or presto stuffing or what else chili and all that (?). Did someone actually sit there and stuff the olives.
Powered by Dial2Do
. Mp3

Friday, October 09, 2009

The Virtue of Mongrels

At the moment, this is only half a thesis, but...

Although it is a lie, it is said that the Inuit have hundreds of words for snow. This is known as a 'focal vocabulary'. It is a pervasive concept. You'll see it in hardware stores, shoe shops, circuses, uranium mines, poker games, and stock exchanges (though the last two could be said to be almost the same thing). By being so deeply composed of bastardisations and Anglicisations of foreign words, the English language incorporates a phenomenal capacity for focal vocabularies.
English does this in a contemporary fashion by way of compound words and the slightly more exotic portmanteaus. Taking a historical view, though, there are many more examples of focal vocabularies that have seized on translations to provide new words which start as synonyms, but are eventually imbued with specific definitions and subtleties. By way of example:

Automobile is never thought of a 'self-moving'
Submarine is more than 'below the ocean'
Peninsula is the accepted term, not 'near-island'

Friday, October 02, 2009

Perhaps it is the...




Perhaps it is the case of a key term in terms of a trigger word use stop although might be end because it seems to have not recognize the stop thing because I keep talking. It's proving interesting.
Powered by Dial2Do
Dial2Do
. Mp3

I think the program...




I think the program that I'm having with this recording service is that it seems to be cutting me off. Either with the time limit or when I say something in particular. And I don't know why it stops when it's done. It doesn't say.
Powered by Dial2Do
Dial2Do
. Mp3

This is just a...




This is just a test recording to see how well this new dial2do service actually manages to handle this sort of speech that I use. And when I'm using it in a place like.
Powered by Dial2Do
Dial2Do
. Mp3

No Transcription





Powered by Dial2Do
Dial2Do
. Mp3

Thursday, October 01, 2009

The essence of a detonation is its sound. Also, it may not be technically correct to cause an implosion via detonation. you might have to call it something else. The detonation, that is.

Also, I now know the appropriate context for the use of 'preclude', as opposed to 'exclude'.

From the SMH, and Colbert before that:

"which follows other Sesame Street healthy eating campaigns, such as the character of the Cookie Monster famously declaring that ''cookies are a sometimes food''. Last year the puppet appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his new outlook, describing his ''crazy times'' of cookie-eating in the '70s and '80s and referring to himself as ''the Robert Downey jnr of cookies''."

Monday, September 28, 2009

Fiction

Went back in time today. Killed the moustachioed German. World now much safer without Einstein. On down side, time machine not working.

This is great stuff.

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

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

From Nano Letters:

"Self-Assembly of Lithographically Patterned Nanoparticles"

"Triggering Enzymatic Activity with Force"

Like all the best science, this is both the dawn of whole new fields and an explanation for things that some cultures have accepted (thought not necessarily understood) for hundreds of years.

Friday, September 18, 2009

It's not really a punch, but I was still beaten to it.

The phrase 'limited sedition'. I really was going to be disappointed if the two words had existed for this long without anyone bothering to put them together.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Yes, I really am a lawyer.

So much so that even if I wasn't one, I'd still be one.

To wit: I wonder if any jilted fiancee has ever sued the seducer of their betrothed for conspiracy to induce breach of contract? While suing the betrothed directly is more offensive to public policy these days, the conspiracy angle might still get up.

Three Things

1. Allow me to be typically male for a moment:

Summer, meet ladies. Ladies, meet summer. I think you two are going to get along just fine.

2. I saw a bloke who appeared to be thrilled that he had two tickets to his own gun show. I'm not sure it was warranted.

3. On seeing a guy in a wheelchair that has an "Orgasm Donor" sticker on the back of it, I think it is reasonable to wonder if the occupant of the chair put it there himself.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

Apple. Removing the user-interface from the secure part of the Shuffle, and forcing you to use shitty earphones.

http://www.apple.com/au/ipodshuffle/features.html#overlay-controls