Man walks into a show yard dressed as a Port Adelaide supporter and gets chatting to the salesman who went into his office. A couple of minutes later the salesman returns to find no supporter and no AU$60,000 Massey Fergusson tractor.

Police are looking for a man with a black painted face and blue hair on a red tractor. According to police he should “stand out”.

You couldn’t make it up if you tried..

This is pretty bizzare, according to the BBC News people a Swede who’s never been to Warwick has been fined for parking his snowmobile illegally in Warwick in mid-summer.
A rather neat trick if you ask me..

We went to the cinema tonight to go and see The Corporation, a film about corporate culture and, as in the US corporations are legally individuals under the 14th Amendment, what sort of a person are they ?

The results is a diagnosis of psychopathy, although they seem to imply they’re using DSM IV, it’s interesting to note that Psychopathy isn’t included there, the nearest being Anti-Social Personality. The film gives a lot of disturbing examples, some of which you’ll have heard of and some you won’t.

There’s a couple of good reviews knocking around the net and I suggest that if you want to see what corporations can get up to, along with an example of a corporate CEO who has seen the light on sustainability then go see it.

It’s a long film, but I’m suprised that although I knew it was over 2 hours the end arrived sooner than I thought it would.

We had a friend over last night for dinner, and he brought with him a rather nice dessert wine called Noble Taminga from Trentham Estate up in NSW.

According to the bottle and a Trentham Estate PDF file about the wine it was originally developed by CSIRO and owes a lot of its taste to the fact that it’s suited to Botrytis infection which gives the grapes the sweet taste.

Hoorah, finally a US government report from 13 agencies admits that humans cause global warming according to New Scientist.

Of course, having admitted there’s a problem the question is how long will it take them to get around to doing anything about it ?

Given that it looks like an unpleasant truth that the US-AU "Free Trade" Agreement will get passed and almost certainly bring us gems of legislation like the DMCA and US patent law

It’s the Patent Law that is especially frightening for those of us in the IT industry, if you wonder why then please read this article from the Sydney Morning Herald about
how a lawyer recommends that the patent system be abused, including:

Monopolies are the only way to make real money these days, and patents are fantastic because they allow you to establish legal monopolies.

It was necessary not only to patent the way we were doing things, but also to think laterally, and patent all the ways other people might do them as well, not so that we could actually do these things ourselves, but so we could prevent others from doing them.

I find it amazing that someone can say that sort of thing and it not raise serious alarm bells..

Now given the first quote, and the fact that Microsoft are busy applying for patents in the US at the rate of around 10 a day, what does that say to you about the sort of things they might try and do with them.

The BBC News service is reporting that the Maldives may disappear as a nation due to global warming.

Sea rise there is just under 1cm a year and: "Since 80% of its 1,200 islands are no more than 1m above sea level, within 100 years the Maldives could become uninhabitable".

The Maldives was the first country to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and has since written to President Bush in an attempt to get the US to sign up (as they’re a major source of greenhouse gases), but the US hasn’t even bothered to reply.

What makes this more disturbing is growing evidence (as reported in New Scientist magazine of 24th July) that the effects of clouds have probably been underestimated in global warming as a feedback mechanism. The latest moves by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to weed out poor models that fail to predict climate change seems to be removing those that predict lower increases in temperature and do not take good account of cloud change.

The remaining models which do take better account of clouds are generally predicting higher temperatures, some predicting up to a 10C rise in global temperature for a doubling in carbon dioxide, rather than the currently accepted 3C rise. Now this can only make the future even more bleak for the Maldives and other low lying countries.

The BBC report doesn’t address the rather obvious question of what happens to the population of a country that disappears under the waves, through no fault of their own. Do the major polluters have a moral responsibility to take them in, and/or to make reparations ?

The Guardian is reporting that the UK will get its own "anti-terror pack" which leads me to wonder will they follow the lead of the Australian government and ship everyone an anti-terrorist fridge magnet ?

The ABC’s 7:30 Report has a regular (and very good) political comedy sketch on Thursdays done by John Clarke and Brian Dawe, sort of "Monty Python meets Yes Minister".

In February 2003 they they took a hilarious look at this pack, including this snip:

INTERVIEWER: Could you tell me what this is?

JOHN HOWARD: This is just a letter, Bryan, to Australians explaining the geopolitical position and counselling them not to worry too much, not to panic.

INTERVIEWER: Not to worry unnecessarily.

JOHN HOWARD: No, don’t be too alarmed.

INTERVIEWER: And what’s it called again?

JOHN HOWARD: You can see what it’s called.

It’s called “Look out! There’s A Terrorist Behind You With An Axe”.

INTERVIEWER: And this is a fridge magnet?

JOHN HOWARD: It’s a fridge magnet, Bryan, yes.

INTERVIEWER: And what’s it for?

JOHN HOWARD: For sticking on the fridge.

INTERVIEWER: But why?

JOHN HOWARD: So you don’t get attacked by terrorists.

Oh, we sent our pack back, return to sender..

Here’s a neat idea, take Tom Lehrer’s classic “The Elements”, and create a cute flash animation to go with it (with his permission by the look of the site).

Donna and I went over to have dinner at some friends on Saturday night, so whilst shopping in our local organic shop that morning I came across a beer called Hightail Ale from a company called Mountain Goat Beer, a small microbrewery in Richmond in Melbourne.

They describe Hightail as "a traditional English style ‘real ale’" and they’re not kidding. It was a lovely taste of home, even if the heathens were keeping it in the fridge! 🙂

A very nice suprise to find, and I think it’s going to be well worth exploring their other brews!