Err hmm - Taxpayer Funded Intelligentsia, Aussie style?

I came across this government report, enticingly titled: Report: Link between head injury and serious violent offences .

My first thought upon reading the title was, "several years of research and tens of thousands of taxpayers' dollars spent to come to the conclusion that when someone beats you repeatedly on the skull with a crowbar, it causes damage?"

Now that's money well spent.

Emergency Post

If an ambulance hits you as it's speeding to someone in need, will it stop to assist you, or call another ambulance and go to the person who called it?

Actually, this question has been bothering me for some time about the emergency services, so much so that I think about it every time I hear the emergency siren. I was almost crossing a road when a truck with a siren ran the red light and I thought "Oh, I could have jumped in front of it, got knocked over and tested what would have happened!" Oh dear.

Then I realised it was a fire engine.

I heard another today, but it was an ambulance motorcycle (it's the first time I've seen one of those). It's not quite the same thing, is it?

This is really getting to me. It's like, if doctors get sick, do they write their own sick notes to say they're too sick to go to work? .... or come to hospital?

I've never been a doctor before (or for that matter, an ambulance) so I don't know.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty

Ahh heck. It seems only recently I was writing a whole lot of agonised posts about job interviews, and soon I may be writing them all over again, because this li'l job at this 'ere place is coming to an end pretty darn soon. Or maybe it only seens pretty recent because I've been lazy about updating this blog, so it's only been a few posts ago, but quite a while ago?

Anyhow, news from this job: We lost. I mean the court case. A lovely farewell card to this job.

I felt terribly nervous when the jury came in with the verdict, and when they finally said it "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty." - I wasn't sure how to react.

I'm glad I didn't react like one man in the court, who for some reason got so excited he started cheering at the guilty verdict and rushing about with glee, which didn't make anyone feel any better, and didn't impress the judge too much.

The accused's mother broke down and started screaming, and they had to call an ambulance.

The truth is, you spend so much time preparing for this and talking to the families, and in the end you will never know if he was guilty or if he was not. Maybe he deserved to go to gaol, or perhaps he is an innocent man who will be locked away. There is just a lump inside you when you remember, especially, his crying mother, his laughing children.

I'll just have the platelets, hold the blood ...

Has anyone ever been inspired by one of these posters (found outside the Red Cross, in Sydney's Clarence Street), to burst into the donation centre, and say,


"Hi, I'd like to donate a large number of platelets, you can take a moderate amount of plasma, but no blood. Cool with you?"?

Frostbitten Mittens

I have recently taken to singing Christmas songs, and it's driving Mr Coffee crazy, not just because I can't hold a note to save my life, but because I'm really early or really late for Christmas, depending on whether you're a cup half-full-or-half-empty type of person.

But it's not my fault, it's because of all those mulchy Christmas symbols with snowmen wearing Christmas caps and houses covered in white. My hands are getting frostbitten, and I'm beginning to think it's a whiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite Christmas. I'm also wondering at how I'm actually going to get to the end of this post. Every so often I have to sit on my hands and hope this warms my hands up just so I can type a few more letters, otherwise there would be no more post.

I don't know how the Eskimos can stand it. They say they had 42 words for snow or something, but what's the use of them if your fingers are so frozen you can't write any of them down?