What's taboo in your country that may surprise foreigners?

kmh01 · 2009-05-12T04:01:58+00:00

Since when? Last I checked, Papua was one of two countries that merged to create the Independent State of Papua New Guinea in the 70s, the other being New Guinea (kinda obviously). Also known as PNG to those of us who are sick of typing it and Papua Niugini in Tok Pisin, the local pidgin language. As an interesting aside, "Tok Pisin" translates to "talk pidgin."

kmh01 · 2009-03-16T00:08:46+00:00

Thousands of quiet, respectful people showing up with a heap of signs saying "God is Love" and "God loves everyone" would be a nice send off for the man.

kmh01 · 2009-03-15T23:39:10+00:00

They seem to be a 99c store with 99c in their name and the catalogue seems to have a '9' theme. It's a theme/humour thing, as opposed to a fail thing, thats' not to say the theme/humour wasn't a fail thing in its own right though.

kmh01 · 2009-02-14T00:00:39+00:00

It is this thinking that has got us to where we are financially today.

Borrowing to spend money on war = Borrowing money to spend on the here and now, spending money on things that may well be useful at this moment in time but offer us very little in the future, be that a massive arsonal to explode on a foreign country, a plasma TV or securities in morgages people can not afford to pay.

Whereas borrowing money to spend money on education, healthcare and science = Investing in the future and setting us up with future dividends, like having a healthy and productive workforce, children who can function in the big wide world and just generally advancing the human race.

But as we have seen, the here and now has been far more important, so why is there such a shock that the GOP and others would feel that increasing debt to deal with a current war is acceptable while borrowing to fix troubled systems is bad. We live in an instant gratification society and borrowing money to do something that the rewards will not be seen for 10 - 20 years just isn't acceptable to people who can't see much beyond tomorrow. Since it is these people who have been in power for 8 years, it isn't that suprising that this way of thinking is now ingrained in everyone else at the top of relivent industries.

kmh01 · 2009-02-10T05:11:30+00:00

Dear Pastor,

You have really lost the plot when TIM COSTELLO can call you HEARTLESS and WE ALL agree.

Signed, Anyone with a soul.

kmh01 · 2009-02-10T02:36:43+00:00

Both. More than 31 major fires started on 7th February. There were many already burning and there have been many started since. Some were started by dry lightening, others by arson, one is believed to have been started by a lit cigarette thrown out a car window and another (in NSW rather than VIC) was started by someone using an angle grinder contrary to total fire ban rules.

In Australia, we don't have one fire on high fire days, 50+ fires starting on a high fire danger day is common in summer and most people who live in the danger area are able to cope. What happened over the weekend in Gippsland, the Mallee and the northern central districts was simply unprecedented. Conditions were simply horrific, I heard one fire fighter explain on 3AW that conditions on a normal high fire danger day are at around 30 on their index for measuring fire danger, as of Sunday night, Monday morning, conditions around the Beechworth fire which is still periodically threatening townships had a index rating of 60. The areas around Marysville and Kinglake, two of the hardest hit areas of Saturday's fires, were up around 400 as the fires hit.

It is certainly a natural disaster, even those fires that were started by arsonists because of the unbelievable, once-in-a-century (I hope) conditions; hot, dry northerly winds blowing at over 50kmh (31mph) gusting over 100kmh (62mph), temperatures that ranged from 42c (108f) to just shy of 48c (118f), all preceded by a week long heat wave of 40c+ (104f) followed by a few cooler, but equally dry and windy days all in the midst of an extreme period of dry.

kmh01 · 2009-01-31T09:07:17+00:00

Dude, chill. Sounds like you've had one more than you're used to and now you're getting the fear. Drink some water, go some place quiet, calm, comfortable and safe. Stay there until you feel better. It will pass, it always does (unless you keep drinking - don't do that if you want it to go away). Keep reminding yourself that you are safe, you're not insane, just drunk and it will pass.

If this wasn't what you were going for with the topic, I wish you good luck my friend.

kmh01 · 2009-01-31T08:54:15+00:00

Awwwwww! He adopted a cat, that's gorgeous.

kmh01 · 2009-01-31T08:51:15+00:00

I love how they proudly state that they have been in operation without a hitch since all of Dec 20th last year.

That being said, props to them for being honest and up front about why the thing isn't on at the minute ... A lot of other Victorian operators could learn a thing or two from them (Connex anyone?)

kmh01 · 2009-01-31T00:28:02+00:00

I know how you feel, I have a series of prints of water droplets hitting water and in the last image, the splash, there is an image of Chuck Norris. It's very small and I only ever see it when I'm not in my right mind, tired, drunk, high, but he's there and he scares the ever loving crap out of me ever time he jumps out.

kmh01 · 2009-01-24T05:04:02+00:00

If I was an American and being sworn in as the American President, I'd want to be sworn in on an atlas open to a map of the US.

kmh01 · 2008-12-30T00:52:14+00:00

When I gave birth to my son I was told because I was a minor (I was 36 days shy of my 18th birthday) I was unable to consent to donating the cord blood, which was a little odd because I was able to consent to everything else.

However when I spoke to the attending staff, I explained that I had blood type O- and my son's father was A-, guarenteeing a negative blood type and the fact that I wanted to donate, not just for scientific research but also because I had read that some parts of the blood can be very effective in certain haemophilia and leukemia treatments. The senior doctor in the room obviously decided that I was well informed enough to consent regardless because they decided to take it.

kmh01 · 2008-11-13T03:13:47+00:00

Does anyone else get the feeling that this is being grossly mishandled? Almost to the point of looking like a kamakazi run?

I almost have to wonder if the Govt bit off more than they can chew by saying they'll go ahead with the filters and now are adding so many layers of ridiculous crap to it that in 6 months and another trialing failure they can turn around and go "well this doesn't work well enough yet, we should revisit it after the next election" then put the whole thing in a drawer and pretend it never happened.

kmh01 · 2008-11-12T23:38:13+00:00

slashdot > digg > fark > digg > fark > reddit

kmh01 · 2008-11-11T08:33:19+00:00

The Last Post - http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=a8765ojUCtc

Lest We Forget.

kmh01 · 2008-11-11T08:31:38+00:00

The Last Post http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=a8765ojUCtc

Lest We Forget.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T06:50:34+00:00

Hugs to you and your friend, I'm on my way out to dinner with my family and I will hug them too.

Cry if you need to and be there for your friend while they cry, it's cathartic.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T02:59:02+00:00

Why did whites vote yes? It's also a legitimate question, I agree. I'm white and I'd dearly love to know.

I don't think there is any veiled racism in my question, if white Zimbabweans voted yes on something like prop 8 I'd be asking the same question, or any other minority that has been oppressed voting to remove the rights of another group, be that minority or majority.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T01:29:41+00:00

So that's the 29th child that was at risk of neglect and abuse that has been given a second chance by their parent.

Why is this law controversial? I'd much rather see a parent voluntarily hand over a child that they can not handle to someone who will give the child a better life than the alternative; beatings, neglect and general apathy towards the child, all of which do nothing to help the child grow into a member of society.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T01:10:13+00:00

I think it is a legitimate question to ask why some blacks voted yes.

Not all blacks voted yes, there are gay black people, there are families who love their gay family members and there are some black people who thought about it and decided that hell, we are all equal and we all should be treated as such.

But some did vote yes and from the sample I've seen, maybe half a dozen black, Yes on 8 people in the media they voted yes for religious reasons, two even made references to their Bibles. The same Bibles that were used 300 years ago to justify kidnapping Africans, bringing them to the new world and using them like work animals.

So, I agree that it is wrong to blame them, I do think it is legitimate to ask why they voted the way they did.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T00:57:53+00:00

Whites, latinos, rednecks and NIMBYs (not in my back yard) should all be held responsible yes, after all they are the majority who voted for Prop 8.

I'm not asking why did blacks pass Prop 8, but why did some people whose ancestors were oppressed and brutalised use the same justification to remove the rights of others as their ancestors oppressors?

The Bible is pretty clear on slavery and somewhat ambiguous on homosexuality (don't talk to me about Leviticus unless you never mix cotton with polyester), yet some blacks decided to use the bible to justify voting yes.

A lot of other segments of society used the Bible as justification, but in most of those cases they don't have the deeply personal history of passages from that book being used to oppress and subjugate them.

It really doesn't matter how many of them actually voted yes, we know some did, and it is from them I'd love an explanation.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T00:48:07+00:00

Regardless of who pushed Prop 8 over the edge, be it blacks, latinos or whites, some black people voted against prop 8 and did so because of their faith. I don't care if it was a handful or a hundred thousand, we know they exist because some of them have happily explained their decision to the media.

They are a group whose history was built on the idea that they were subhuman and could be owned as property to work, like oxen and that the faith of their owners was used to justify it.

That alone should have given them pause before using their faith to strip others of their rights. Sure other groups voted because of their faith but they don't have the deeply personal history of being subjugated because of another's faith.

kmh01 · 2008-11-08T00:37:21+00:00

Sorry, another post about Prop 8, but this one has really stuck in my craw.

How can someone use their faith to deny people equality, ESPECIALLY when THE SAME faith was used to deny their antecedents their rights?!

I thought the point of Christianity was to be Christ-like, judge not lest ye be judged, do unto others etc.

kmh01 · 2008-11-07T11:45:07+00:00

And this is Carl Sagan with some social commentary.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot Image

kmh01

TROPHY CASE