When decades-old charges go to court
We have been following a jury trial for the past few days involving an 80-year-old man charged with sex offences which the prosecution alleged occurred 40 years ago involving his niece, who was a child at the time.
The man was found not guilty.
This type of trial troubles me for several reasons. Read more
Tiger and butterfly
The twins had their faces painted today. Jim was unusually extroverted and wanted to be first. He asked to be a tiger. Maggie followed and wanted to be a butterfly.
We went to hear one of my work colleagues who plays acoustic guitar in a duo. They performed this afternoon at a local hotel.
It was great, but we had to leave early to take Michael’s friend to the airport.
The boy flew across from Kalgoorlie last weekend and stayed with us for the second week of the school holidays.
Gambier Centrals Soccer Club
Michael’s under 12 team won 6-0 today and Michael set up five of the goals.
The Gambier Centrals Soccer Club was established in 1962 as part of Sports Club Holland. From the club’s website: Read more
Labor of lust
Australian newspapers today carried reports of the American journalist Doug Brown and his wife Annie who had sex for 101 consecutive days.
Here is a link to an American newspaper report.
Interesting story. The couple are the same age as my wife and I. I’m not sure about writing a book on the subject though. It seems to rather cheapen the intimacy.
And I don’t really want to think about what their definition of “sex” was during Annie’s periods. Read the book, is their commercial answer, I guess.
Smoke alarms
A smoke alarm woke us up the other night. It wasn’t warning us about a fire ripping through the house, but rather its battery was running down.
That was the second time in a fortnight (separate alarms).
Why do smoke alarm battery warnings only start beeping at 3am? Why can’t they make that irritating sound in the afternoon?
Dream déjà vu
I had a dream a few weeks ago which I discounted as being simply imaginary … until I saw an illustration on Tuesday that made me reflect.
In the dream I was in Mount Gambier sometime in the past. I needed to go to the hospital. I can’t recall why, either to visit someone or because I worked there.
The hospital wasn’t easy to get to. I had to climb a steep hill (in the rain); there were no cars. What stuck in my mind though was the image of the hospital.
It was like a cross between a cathedral and a castle — a long stone building with arches and turrets. Read more
AFL Celtic idea abandoned
I thought it curious last Saturday The Age ran with a front-page lead story on the possibility of an Irish-theme team being established in Sydney. The story was also prominent on Fairfax websites.
Today there is a story online, which is far more realistic, headlined West Sydney ground zero.
It talks about building a broad-based supporter base from scratch for a new team. This paragraph is nestled in the story:
Less than a week after it was reported that the league was considering a proposal to create an Irish-aligned club — known as the Celtics — that idea has been effectively abandoned.
Stop poaching doctors from poor countries
I’m not sure about the desirability or sustainability of Australia poaching doctors from poor countries to fill vacancies in our depleted medical workforce.
The “great brain drain” it’s known as around the world. The United Kingdom, United States and other affluent nations also recruit third world doctors.
In Australia, more than 10 percent of the medical workforce is made up of foreign-trained doctors, most of them from Asia. Read more
Solomon penalty harsh
I was expecting Dean Solomon to be rubbed out between four and six weeks for his crude hit on Geelong midfielder Cameron Ling.
Solomon’s penalty is the harshest for an AFL player since Carlton’s Greg Williams was suspended for nine weeks after pushing an umpire in 1997.
Big Bad Barry Hall only copped seven weeks for striking West Coast’s Brent Staker. Read more
Wordpress 2.6 RC1
I’m using Wordpress 2.6 Release Candidate 1. A new feature is the ability to add image captions.
I got this to work, but the styling was non-existent and I’m not smart enough with CSS to code it myself, so I might have to wait until it comes up as an issue with the theme designer.
In the meantime, I discovered the Image Caption plugin which does the job, transforming “alt” tags into captions. Read more
The wall
: I missed this blog's fifth birthday on July 9.
: Nifty!
: Sorry friends. I created a wall page and it accidentally deleted previous comments.
Recent comments
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