Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Brontosaurus Repellant...
This is a blog I have been meaning to post for over a month now. While on the mining camp, I moved around a bit from one set of rooms to another. In the last set I was in way out the back 40, I was in the laundry room and noticed a rather interesting sign. Now I understand trying to make a sign more appealing by adding graphics, but do you ever get the feeling that some people get carried away with the Clip Art? Look at the top left corner of this sign...
This is a blog I have been meaning to post for over a month now. While on the mining camp, I moved around a bit from one set of rooms to another. In the last set I was in way out the back 40, I was in the laundry room and noticed a rather interesting sign. Now I understand trying to make a sign more appealing by adding graphics, but do you ever get the feeling that some people get carried away with the Clip Art? Look at the top left corner of this sign...
Now I'm no expert, but I don't think there is much of a risk of attracting dinosaurs to the laundry room. When I saw this, I thought about a scene where a couple of old men are sitting playing checkers on the front porch of the local buy-it-all country store on a summer morning. One pauses for a moment after making a move and says, "I hear the dinosaurs are going to be bad this year", and the other says, "Yup, it must be all the rain we're getting".
Wouldn't it be fun, though, if we did have dinosaurs in Cannington. We could run the mine that Fred Flintstone worked in. How great would it be to hear the bird toot at knock-off time and go sliding down the tail of my bronto-loader into my foot-powered car only to be ravaged by my raptor pet upon returning home to my hot cave wife and pigmy neighbor.
So remember, turn the lights off to avoid bringing the dinosaurs back from extinction. Maybe that's why nobody's found Nessie yet...why not just build a small laundry room on the banks of loch ness and leave the lights on. Ladybugs, butterflies, dragonflies, and extinct sea monsters will all harken the call of the artificial 75 Watt yellow glow!
Monday, November 27, 2006
MO-VEMBER....
So there's this fundraiser that 's held every year in Australia that lets us guys be the daggy, white trash, unkept slovenly excuses for primates that we are. It's called "Mo-vember", and it's a fund raiser for prostate cancer research and also now male depression. The idea is this: start November clean shaven and grow your gnarliest moustache over the course of the month. You collect donations that go towards prostate cancer research and the organisation Beyond Blue which deals with treatment and education of male depression, especially in rural areas of Australia. The rule is that it must be a proper moustache that does not connect to either the sideburns, or under the chin.
It's a worthy cause, and a national "competition" as a "Mo Bro" is crowned the best tache in each major sponsorship area of Oz. I have several mates that are participating, so I figured I'd give it a go as moral support for those fighting the good fight. I'm always doing crazy things with my facial hair anyways, so this was a perfect excuse to cultivate a gnarly moustache that would make porn stars from the 70's and highway patrolmen the world over jealous. With more time, I'm sure I could come up with something infinitely better, but a month is a relatively short "growing season"
Before I show you the creation, I would like to express my gratitude to all of those who have donated to Mo-vember, and those who have given to any charity that goes towards promoting men's health. Men don't like to seek help or go to the doctor, and that culture needs to change. Without further adue, here is the gnarly mo...I call it the modified mutton chop with a half twist!!
So there's this fundraiser that 's held every year in Australia that lets us guys be the daggy, white trash, unkept slovenly excuses for primates that we are. It's called "Mo-vember", and it's a fund raiser for prostate cancer research and also now male depression. The idea is this: start November clean shaven and grow your gnarliest moustache over the course of the month. You collect donations that go towards prostate cancer research and the organisation Beyond Blue which deals with treatment and education of male depression, especially in rural areas of Australia. The rule is that it must be a proper moustache that does not connect to either the sideburns, or under the chin.
It's a worthy cause, and a national "competition" as a "Mo Bro" is crowned the best tache in each major sponsorship area of Oz. I have several mates that are participating, so I figured I'd give it a go as moral support for those fighting the good fight. I'm always doing crazy things with my facial hair anyways, so this was a perfect excuse to cultivate a gnarly moustache that would make porn stars from the 70's and highway patrolmen the world over jealous. With more time, I'm sure I could come up with something infinitely better, but a month is a relatively short "growing season"
Before I show you the creation, I would like to express my gratitude to all of those who have donated to Mo-vember, and those who have given to any charity that goes towards promoting men's health. Men don't like to seek help or go to the doctor, and that culture needs to change. Without further adue, here is the gnarly mo...I call it the modified mutton chop with a half twist!!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Obese or Darwinian Superiority?
I was getting into the shower the other morning and there was a spider hanging out in a web right in the middle of the tub. Spiders work fast over here, and if there is a "prime" location to spin a web, believe they will in the Goldfields. So being the nature lover that I am, I figure I'll just hit the water and let him/her figure out where to run to keep from being washed down the drain. It's not in my place to take the spider's life, as it could be the one that eats the mosquito that would have given me malaria...or at least a really itchy bump. So he piddles around a bit and finally skitters to a dry location under the soap holder. I figure that's a good location, but then the little rascal crawls out of there and up the wall a bit. Why not stay in the protected location in trade for one out in the open? At that point I figure that spider would learn a bit of sense after it evolves a bit over a few generations in the same environment. I then began thinking about evolution of a species...not the whole man from protazoa or man from monkey crap, but the evolution of a species to adapt to it's specific environment. I then came to the conclusion that animals with a short life span have an advantage when it comes to physical adaptation, as they have more regular modification of adaptive genetic qualities.
How does this apply to man? Outside of the initial skin colour changes ocurring after the mass exodus of modern man out of African 30,000 years ago, man has mostly adapted through inginuity, not physicality....until now. Let's think about this for a minute. "Global warming" or the more politically-correct "climate change" is supposed to dump the Earth into another great ice age (even though the Earth is technically in an ice age since the polar caps are still frozen). What if the obesity "epidemic" is just a genetic adaptation to the upcoming ice age. Fat parents have passed on the genetic potential to be fat onto their children. Insulin resistance, the supposed "fat gene" that controls lipolysis, high 5a reductase levels, and low thyroid levels all give the kid a higher chance of being obese. If that wasn't bad enough, not too many fat parents feed their children salads and tofu. Here honey, have a burger! So when the climate makes this huge swing, all of us fit and skinny people will be at a disadvantage.
I'm a fitness nut with an athletic build, but what if obesity is some ancient genetic coding taking over to evolve humans into a cold-resistant species?
I was getting into the shower the other morning and there was a spider hanging out in a web right in the middle of the tub. Spiders work fast over here, and if there is a "prime" location to spin a web, believe they will in the Goldfields. So being the nature lover that I am, I figure I'll just hit the water and let him/her figure out where to run to keep from being washed down the drain. It's not in my place to take the spider's life, as it could be the one that eats the mosquito that would have given me malaria...or at least a really itchy bump. So he piddles around a bit and finally skitters to a dry location under the soap holder. I figure that's a good location, but then the little rascal crawls out of there and up the wall a bit. Why not stay in the protected location in trade for one out in the open? At that point I figure that spider would learn a bit of sense after it evolves a bit over a few generations in the same environment. I then began thinking about evolution of a species...not the whole man from protazoa or man from monkey crap, but the evolution of a species to adapt to it's specific environment. I then came to the conclusion that animals with a short life span have an advantage when it comes to physical adaptation, as they have more regular modification of adaptive genetic qualities.
How does this apply to man? Outside of the initial skin colour changes ocurring after the mass exodus of modern man out of African 30,000 years ago, man has mostly adapted through inginuity, not physicality....until now. Let's think about this for a minute. "Global warming" or the more politically-correct "climate change" is supposed to dump the Earth into another great ice age (even though the Earth is technically in an ice age since the polar caps are still frozen). What if the obesity "epidemic" is just a genetic adaptation to the upcoming ice age. Fat parents have passed on the genetic potential to be fat onto their children. Insulin resistance, the supposed "fat gene" that controls lipolysis, high 5a reductase levels, and low thyroid levels all give the kid a higher chance of being obese. If that wasn't bad enough, not too many fat parents feed their children salads and tofu. Here honey, have a burger! So when the climate makes this huge swing, all of us fit and skinny people will be at a disadvantage.
I'm a fitness nut with an athletic build, but what if obesity is some ancient genetic coding taking over to evolve humans into a cold-resistant species?
