Edinburgh

Kelso

Mull, Tobermory

Oban

We spent a few days in Oban, on the west coast
McCaig's Folly: McCaig kept the local stonemasons employed for a while to build this thing. He wanted to build a tower in the middle but he died. So it's now a garden.

Kerrera Island
Sheila looking weathered

Duart Castle from the ferry to Mull. Some sailors in the Spanish Armada were imprisoned here, 'after sailing into foreign waters unaccustomed, adjust to a new condition of living'

Carlisle

more great photography

Steve, Craig and I got up off the couch to go to the Christmas market. Bit like Queen Vic market, but run mostly by Germans. Got stuck in to the mulled wine, felt bad for Frenchie stall owner who we were blocking any customers coming to.

'Meet you under Santa's r-ctum, near the four clarinetists. Ok, bye.'

Won't be shy in saying that it was a mistake to go to the kind of bar we ended up at:

'You're Australian, are you? Where are you from?'
'Melbourne.'
'Ever been to the inside-out bar?'
'Nah, never heard of it.'
'..Are you an escort?'
'No, I'm not. Look, ah, take care of yourself, ok? Gonna go talk to my friends.'

Emissions trading scheme

From Crikey. Brilliant.

Imagine a world where every policy a government produces has to pass one of two tests to get implemented. The first test is to convince its political enemy and only real political competition to agree with any given policy, the second test is to get three disparate groups to agree with any given policy, but where two of them are usually engaged in outright warfare with each other as their respective constituencies come from literally opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

Now imagine in such a world if the government proposed an Emissions Trading Scheme -- what do you think the chances would be of that government getting any given level of emissions reduction to pass one of those two tests? Unfortunately this world happens to be the one we live in, and the probabilities of passing either of those tests look a little like this:

Who lives in the real world? Fucking brilliant. I reckon you can plot any political disagreement between the major and minor parties like this. Questions: What is the positive limit on the domain of the Greens graph? Where does the self-stabbing knife lie? Does it flatten out like a High Plains Plateau?
(obviously it asymptotes at 100%.. Unless you live in North Korea. The Onion: 'Kim Jong Il's poularity drops to 120%')

In other news I heard that the science museum in London is going to put together an exhibit on Acorn computers. The BBC Micro! I'm getting on ebay.

Having said that, it's a bit shit that Rudd has to go the middle way. Leadership and (oratory style bleagh) and all that would skew the graphs, right? Get people pumped? If the rising of the seas was the only only thing to happen due to global warming, then bring it on. Turnbull's electorate would go under. Journalists like Piss Bolt who seem to take the world in mainly by big showy things like wars and the colour of people's skin and nice one, that asylum seeker got a TER of 99.8 that they would have to recognise that something was going on because now Malcolm has to attend the electorate's sausage sizzle in boardies. Sea: was here, now here. Underwater denial? Water Rats!

The paperboy steers the boat down the street. The rolled glad-wrapped Herald-Sun is lobbed over the hedge and sploshes into the front garden.

Can the ETS not be reviewed? Is this not a good start? Truman said 'We'll put our policies forward. If they don't work, we'll change them.'

Also, there will be a by-election going on in the district on Frome, I think all the Jerichos will be voting in that one. Apparently form 1930s - 1960s there was a bit of a discrepancy in power in that the liberal-voting farmers out-weighed the city voters 2-1, the same way that Tasmanians are the most electorally valuable people in Australia (samll population, same representation). When the Liberal Federation and the Country Party joined, the deal got even worse for the city-voting Labour.

from wiki:

By 1965, two-thirds of the population resided in the Adelaide Metropolitan area, yet those living outside it elected two-thirds of the House of Assembly members.
...
The Labor Party gained power under Frank Walsh, and in 1967, under Dunstan. However, they were defeated in 1968.

Dunstan. There is a statue of him with Bolte, near Treasury gardens in Melbourne. Glenn Richards wrote 'Bolte and Dunstan talk youth', and put it on 'Moo, you bloody choir'.

From 'The Chap'

thechap.net:

The Primark Effect

MPs have come up with a new term to describe the clogging up of municipal dumps with discarded budget clothing, which will never decompose due to its unrecyclable synthetic constitution. The so-called Primark Effect refers to a chain of stores that peddle instant gratification to the sort of people who need to buy a new T-shirt every few hours to feel fulfilled. Almost instantly bored by their purchase, or terrified that it may already have gone out of fashion, they hurriedly stuff it into a bin liner and hurl it into the dump.

Meanwhile, a tailor thinks he has come up with the antidote: Austen Pickles has created the first ever “carbon-neutral” suit, by committing to offset 300 per cent of the carbon emission from its production. Both these approaches seem to bypass the actual quality of the clothing, one to pander to the eco-warriors and the other to annoy them.

The most ethical approach to tailoring, however, is the one which chaps have been following since time immemorial, whereby suits are handed down through several generations, tweed jackets are worn until they have potatoes growing in the pockets (when they are then pressed into service in the garden). If they are not lucky enough to receive hand-me-downs from their grandfathers, chaps simply pop into a vintage gentlemen’s emporium and buy someone else’s grandfather’s herringbone Harris Tweed three-piece.

Pre paid

Annotation from halfbakery.com:

Pre-paid crime. Go to prison first, for some specified time, and once you get out you can do the crime you already did the time for. If it was murder, everyone would be treating you really nicely, yes?

Leeds, ASDA, Rolls and Royce.

I had a story about these self-service checkouts at ASDA.. Ah, that's right. I put my last-day-at-work chocolate through the self service check-out at ASDA. I put all the chocolates over the scanner, put them in my bag and go to press 'Finish and Pay' on the touch screen. I was wearing gloves at the time, the computer wouldn't respond to my poking the screen. Under an acre of fluorescent lights I removed my glove for this poor machine to feel the human touch. Ha!

There's a plaque in the foyer of the Midlands Hotel, commemorating Mr Rolls and Mr Royce getting together over a beer and starting an automobile company.

The Corn Exchange. Leeds



Sheila's friend told her that 'Leeds? It's sh-t'. She also said that pretty much everywhere in England is sh-t. So we went to Leeds.

This Sporting Life

Just heard that 'This Sporting Life' will end soon, with Roy and HG going to Triple M. Very sad. 22 years at Triple J.

Still hopeful: Roy and HG did the Dream at Channel 7, then came back to Triple J. They had a hiatus during the Olympics. And, those drive-time radio presenters don't last forever (a few years?) at the one station/timeslot..

Kinda think that they'll be funny, but not as good as we have heard them. And I think they'll still do the State of Origin / Grand Finals, somehow.

Autoportraits

A few guys making expressions like cars:

http://www.vladimir-nikolic.com/autoportraits.html

'I’m very happy that I made it.' -author

Nick's birthday

And Dave was up early for work

Ralph McQuarrie's storyboard paintings for the Star Wars Trilogy

via Drawn! and Flickr:

Details: Stormtroopers with lightsabers, and shields?


Chewie?

Proto B-wings attacking the proto Death Star.


Lucas went to Norway to shoot the scenes based on Hoth. He should have waitied for sunlight like this!

'Stand by, Ion control.. Fire!'
The first transport is away!


Just one more pass!

By now you should've somehow realised what you gotta do

I saw the Cardinals perform at Manchester Academy. It was pretty amazing to hear them play 'Wonderwall', and to have the local crowd really get into it.

Bridgewater

Kristy hides in the cabinet room behind some noisy plumbing.

McCain laments the GOP's romance of Sarah Palin, bursts into tears upon hearing Kasey Chambers and Shane Nicholson's 'Sweetest waste of time'

Wednesday, Atlantic City Casino buffet:


The beers, tight-but-not-clinical harmonies of Kasey and Shane, and the beautiful pedal steel work of Bill Chambers got too much for old Walnuts McCain, sources say.


If all this waitin'
Just leaves me wantin'

You still would be the sweetest waste of time
I choose Sarah Palin as my running mate.

If I could learn
The ways of your mind


If I could burn
A hole in your cold heart
Damn fundamentalist!

For every time I called your name



If you don't need me
when you get lonely



If you don't want me
to call your own
Don't be using this publicity just to launch your contention for 2012!


If all this hopin'
Just leaves me hurting


You still would be the sweetest waste of time
Hey, we did all right. Did we do all right?

Due to Palin's desire to take out her frustration, Ecologists predict a sharp drop in the 'Alaskan moose population.'