McCain has chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. I’ll let others do most of the commenting but here are a few pictures.
She like bikes.
Thats the family seaplane.
PETA are not going to like her.
Seems a good choice to me.
Archive for August, 2008
If the Royal Australian Institute of Architects has it way we will all be living in apartments and town houses:
AUSTRALIA’S big cities are being urged to ban outer suburban housing estates to cut urban sprawl and be more like London and Rome.
The nation’s peak architectural body wants Australian cities to focus on boosting their inner and middle suburbs’ density rather than release land in outer areas, to become more sustainable.
Sorry, this has been the curse of the Sydney housing market for years. The limitations on land availability has forced land prices up destroying the Australian dream of home ownership. The architect’s hated of suburban sprawl is not shared by ordinary Australian’s who love their MacMansions. The government should do the reverse, to open as much land as it properly can to maintain proper supply. As to the concerns over transportation, the answer is to foster commercial development in reginal CBDs like Parramatta and Liverpool so outer suburb residents don’t have so far to travel.
I hazard to guess that many of these architects are inner city types who would benefit from the higher housing prices their policies would cause.
Went down to the local bookshop during lunch time today and saw the new cook book 4 Ingredients 2 . I favorably reviewed the first book and even sent them some recipes. They must have liked them because two have been included. They are:
Maltese Cheese pie
ingredients:
3 beaten eggs,
500-600 grams ricotta cheese
1/4 cup chopped parsley
two sheets puff pastry
Method.
Combine the eggs , cheese and parsly in a mixing bowel but keep a small amount of egg for basting. Season to taste. Line a sheet of pastry in a pie dish. Fill with mixture. Cover with the other sheet and seal edges with a fork. Paint the top of the pie with the remaining egg mix and cut a few air holes in the pastry. Bake for at 180 deg for 30-45 minutes or until golden brown.
Yummy when hot but I like it cold too.
Bread and butter pudding
ingredients:
4 slices of cafe’ style fruit loaf toast bread (or 5-6 of the ordinary type)
2 tablespoons or so of butter
2 1/2 cups milk
1 small packet of Fosters’ Egg Custard
Method
Butter the bread on both sides , then cut in fours and place in a greased oven proof dish. Mix the milk and egg custard in a mixing bowl until the powder is dissolved. Pour over the bread. Let the bread soak up the liquid for 30 minutes then bake at 180 degrees for 45 minutes or until the top is golden brown.
You know, New South Wales real problem is not power generation, or transport or hospitals, its not even the imbalance between federal and state taxation. All those are a symptoms of a much bigger problem, the quality of the people in government.After hearing about the depressing nonsense in parliament today I came across this: Westpac CEO Gail Kelly, is regarded by Forbes magazine as one of the world’s most powerful women. What can we do to get people like her in parliment? The Americans can get top leaders from the private sector in politics, Mitt Romney comes to mind, but the only Australian that that I can think of is Malcolm Turnbull. Frankly if money was the issue I would be happy to pay them 10 times a pollies salary.
Prime Minister Rudd has received general applause for his education policy announced today. And with good reason too, he wants greater transparency, sack slack teachers etc. However I can’t help feeling uneasy about this. He is the Prime Minister, not a state Premier. The states still run the schools. The plan may start out OK but a decade down the track don’t be surprised if confusion between two governments leads to a mess like hospitals.
To those who say the Commonwealth has a responsibility to step in if state governments fail I say why? Ineffective state governments can be changed by voters at election time. If the feds bail out slack states then there is less likelihood of a change in government. Considering that all state governments are currently Labor maybe thats one of the real aims of this policy.
Aussie singer, actress and vegetarian Sophie Monk has been caught out buying takeaway from KFC. Considering her support for PETA criticism has followed:
AUSTRALIA’S sexiest Hollywood export Sophie Monk has been criticised for being two-faced, after she was snapped with food from a KFC restaurant – a fast food chain she has bagged in the past as a vegetarian.
Celebrity gossip websites have reported seeing Monk walking out of a KFC in Hollywood, with photos that reveal her holding a take away drink and a bag filled with KFC fast food…
Frankly I hope she is getting stuck into the Colonel’s secret herbs and spices. Have a look at her, the girl needs a good feed. If she was my girl friend I would take here to Merrylands Bowling Club, they have a real good all you can eat.
Hilliary Clinton is forming a “whipping Team” to keep her unruly supporters in check.
In an unusual move, Hillary Clinton’s staff is creating a 40-member “whip team” at the Denver Democratic convention to ensure that her supporters don’t engage in embarrassing anti-Obama demonstrations during the floor vote on her nomination, according to people familiar with the planning…..
“If people get down there on the floor and want to start blowing kazoos and making a scene, we want to make sure we’ve got people who stand in front of them with Obama signs,” said a person involved in the planning…
Which is perfectly proper, in fact a bit of S&M could be good for them. Thats what an Australian researcher has found:
Our findings support the idea that bondage and discipline and sadomasochism (BDSM) is simply a sexual interest or subculture attractive to a minority,” Associate Professor Juliet Richters and her colleagues wrote in the Journal of Sexual Medicine……
In fact, men who take part may be happier, with results showing they score significantly lower on a scale of psychological distress than other men.The researchers did not study why this was, but suspect it might simply be that they’re more in harmony with themselves because they’re into something unusual and are comfortable with that…..
Former rock star and convicted pedophile demands round the clock protection:
Gary Glitter flew into London last night with a demand for around-the-clock police protection.
He fears he could be murdered for his vile crimes against children.
The former rock star has told solicitor David Corker he fears “a nutter will step out of the crowd with a big knife”.
Glitter, 64, who was ordered out of Vietnam this week after serving nearly three years in jail for molesting girls, said he wanted to be guarded from the moment he landed at Heathrow.
He was last night greeted by a mob of photographers and police .
There’s a perfect place for him were he will have lots of protection, gaol.
The Hawke/Keating Labor government was fortunate in having a several free market reformers. They privatized Qantas and the Commonwealth bank, deregulated the dollar and generally tried to make Australia more competitive. The Rudd government seems to have very few. They seem much more interested in protection and anti-competitive regulation. (think Fuelwatch). However they do seem to have at least one, Small Business Minister Craig Emerson.
But now mysticism and superstition are making a comeback. Their revival began in the ’80s with attacks on economic rationalism. Rational economic thinking was condemned in favour of economic irrationalism: ongoing protectionism, deficit financing by printing money, maintaining airlines and banks in public ownership and expanding the role of the state in the commercial world through clever devices such as WA Inc and the Tricontinental merchant bank.
By the ’90s, economic irrationalists had declared competition as the new heresy, attacking the Keating government’s National Competition Policy which is estimated to have increased household incomes by $3500 per annum. Twenty-first century mysticism and superstition is finding expression in the big environmental debates. Deep green extremists yearn for a return to a pre-industrial society, before the Enlightenment when faith and dogma prevailed over rational thinking and evidence-based science. In this gentle agrarian society (absent environmentally destructive hard-hoofed farm animals), human beings are tolerated, as long as they leave no carbon footprint. These deep-green crusaders have declared their opposition to coalmining even if emerging technologies were to reduce its emissions to zero, since coal is regarded as an ugly reminder of an industrial society.
Well worth reading in full, to bad he has no real influence on the governments’ direction.
A few days ago the Californians announced they will build the world’s largest solar energy plants. The two plants will produce a total of 800 megawatts comparable to a decent sized coal or nuclear power station. Being solar they will be sustainable and produce none of those C02 emissions that Penny Wong doesn’t like. That’s the good news. The bad news is that 800 megawatts is only available for a few hours a day most of the time it will be far less. Also they are only being built because of a government mandate and the really big drawback they take up 12.5 square miles of land!
The fact is neither solar or wind can operate in the real world without conventional base-load power stations. When the sun don’t shine or the wind don’t blow you got to turn on the real stuff. That means burning some type of hydrocarbon or a nuke. Which brings me to Liberal frontbencher Ian Macfarlane, whose giving a pro nuke speech tonight.:
Liberal frontbencher Ian Macfarlane opened the latest round of the radioactive debate when he talked up “yellowcake” in a speech.
“It’s a black and white answer. Or should I say a black, green and yellow answer,” he said in the speech, to be delivered in Brisbane tonight.
“Clean coal, renewables and yellowcake – we must include nuclear in our future baseload clean energy mix.”
Brendan Nelson seems to be supportive too:
Liberal leader Brendan Nelson backed Mr Macfarlane’s fresh nuclear push, saying he had “a very strong argument”.
“Our view is that there needs to be consideration in Australia given to the development of a nuclear power industry,” Dr Nelson said.
“We need more rational discussion about nuclear power in Australia and much less of the emotive, political debate we’ve had in the last few years.”
The Liberals are not the only people supporting a local nuclear industry either. Former Labor Premier Bob Carr and unionist Paul Howes have come out in support recently so has Bob Hawke.
You can bet we will hear more about this debate in the coming months.
Discovery Enterprise 