Category: Life

This is my own life, in which I hold a masters degree.

The Way We Were

I’ve been waiting for someone to come up with this; the old ‘Alexa’ service has been archiving sites since the year dot (actually, 1996), as part of a backup to their web-search functions. Now, they’re allowing us to dig through the archives, and sure enough, some of the earliest BONWAGs are there in all their glory – back as far as February 1999 (It was actually born in 1994). How nice that someone bothered to take a copy :-) ! You can have a look at any site and see how many copies have been kept. Like this one. Scary.

Flight Security; what's next?

First, Qantas has to remove all icing powder from their inflight snacks because of Anthrax ‘concerns’. There are some novel (and inconsistent) security measures being enacted on the airlines in the wake of the September 11 attacks, which I can vouch for. Apparently, this guy was prevented getting on a plane because of the books he was reading: twice. One of them was a Harry Potter book, which is similar to my experience on the planes over there: Harry Potter was the book I was reading on the way to and from the USA in September. Full story here

Taking our oval-shaped ball and going home

October 25: The source of some discussion in our house – the ‘International Rules‘ Series between Ireland and Australia – has ended with Ireland in posession of the trophy. Let the gloating begin, Ivan.
It’s a hybrid (read: mutant) game which is never played anywhere in the world aside from this competition; a strange combination of Aussie Rules and Gaelic Football. I don’t watch Gaelic football much, so I only notice the differences with AFL, which are chiefly that there’s a soccer goal at each end with its own points value (no nets in AFL), and a round ball (AFL has an oval ball). I don’t think anyone, anywhere really understands the scoring system.
It’s equivalent to getting Tennis and Badminton players together and pretending it means anything significant. It’s ‘gas craic’ (good fun), mainly for the constant debating about the rules and how much they differ from either of the sports it’s based on. No wonder players take to belting the shite out of each other in frustration. Less wonder that the refs get a little tetchy as well.
Nonetheless, it has the important catchphrase peppering the marketing hype: “International Pride Is On The Line”.
What I don’t get is the current discussion in Australia about whether we’re going to be continuing this competition any more. Wha… just because we can’t win more than we lose? Are we that petty?
Anyway. Congratulations to Ireland. Let the ragging begin.

... and then there's Kostya

We’ve had the best and worst of sport this week; and both extremes have come out of a sport I hate: Boxing.
I don’t think I need to add any more petrol to the blaze Anthony Mundine lit at his own feet by commenting on the September 11 tragedies on The Today Show. Poor him. Quoted out of context, he says. Asked to comment on Australia sending troops that day (he’s a muslim), he said
“I really feel that it’s not our problem. They call it an act of terrorism but if you understand the religion and our way of life it’s not about terrorism, it’s about fighting for God’s laws and America’s brought it upon themselves (for) what they’ve done in history and so on.”
Yeah. I can see how the media have twisted his words.
Some lessons: a nice wrapup of other athletes who’ve burned their own toes. This article from The Age expresses everything I think much better than I’m able.
Then, you have fellow boxer Kostya Tszyu refusing to buy into the whole hype cycle around boxing for the sake of his own kids.
“I don’t hate Zab (his opponent). Why should I say I don’t like him if I do like him? To make sales go higher? I don’t care about this. We are two sportsmen, we are two human beings, we have life after this. How can I teach my kids to respect others?”
Great to see a sportsman with perspective and integrity.
Now, whose head would you rather punch in?

Non-metal Magnets: Go Figure

As if the world wasn’t crazy enough at the moment, a team of scientists in Russia have (allegedly) disproven one of the first things you learnt in science; that magnets are made of metal. They even say it on Play School, for Pete’s sake. This report has me questioning whether anything I learnt in school is really true.

Bert+OBL: This is just getting weird

Wired is reporting one of the stranger linkages of the WTC conflicts; Osama Bin Laden and Bert from Sesame Street. What the?
It looks like the Taliban have Internet, too. There’s a website out there (it’s been around for years) which tracks the less-than-Sesame lifestyle of Bert, friend of Ernie. The parody site Bert Is Evil puts up faked pictures of Bert in various situations like nightclubs and bars, and – now famously – alongside Osama Bin Laden. It seems the Taliban, whether for a joke or out of ignorance, have put the photo on some of their protest placards with a few other photos gathered from the net. This is too weird to be a hoax.

New York: Sneakers. The report I was *supposed* to file

For some reason, I had always associated New York with sneakers. I don’t know why, maybe I’d had a dream in which sneakers had featured prominently which was set in New York.

In any case, I took that as a sign that I needed to replace my old blue pair while I was in the city, and have a reminder of my trip. I didn’t realise when I left what a role they would play.

Because this wound up being a long tale, I’ve transferred it to the ‘Pages’ section. It’s worth a look, because it wasn’t until I started retelling it that I realised how spooky it was.