The subtle attempts by the Howard Government to take Australia back to the White Australia Policy have led to the introduction of a test for new citizens. It is designed to make sure that prospective citizens know something about the country to which they are about to pledge loyalty. By letting them know about “Australian Values”, it might make those people who don’t support “The Australian Way of Life” think twice about moving here. (Not) 

As someone born in this country I would never have to sit the exam, but if I did I wonder if I would pass without a bit of coaching.

Follow the link, have a go and see if you have got what it takes to pass the Australian Citizenship Test.

The other day I was listening to the classic Irish folk tune “The Fields of Athenry”. The song is about a man who is transported to Botany Bay after stealing “Trevelyan’s corn”.

In 2000, we moved with the family to Ireland to look for work and settle for a while. The town we went to was Galway, outside of which is the village of Athenry. Things didn’t work out and we returned to Sydney, originally to Coogee, but soon moved to Botany (Bay) and the name of our street is Trevelyan. (Cue Twilight Zone music).

I awoke on Sunday morning to find the some complete and utter mongrel had tagged my fence. It is an attractive white/cream picket fence with a lovely garden in front of it and does not require any “beautification” by some mindless Bozo with a spray can. I can understand why they might paint on an ugly brick wall in a back alley, but not on my bloody fence.

This is one of those crimes where the Saudi idea of chopping off hands is required!

Psychologists are a weird bunch of people at the best of times, but what about one that studies the strange quirks of people. That’s exactly what Richard Wiseman does and his research methods are quite novel.
For example, if you want to know how honest people are, don’t ask them because they will all be as honest as the day is long. You have to test their honesty without them knowing. In one experiment he sent bogus refund cheques (claiming to be a refund on a piece of furniture the recipient never purchased) to two distinct groups of people. They were priests and used-car salesmen. Half of the used-car salesmen cashed the cheque, while half returned it saying there had been a mistake. What was the ratio for the priests? Exactly the same.
He holds fake séances and records how the people react to various “supernatural phenomena” and how even non-believers are fooled by simple conjuring tricks.
Interestingly, he explains how people can be persuaded to remember events that never actually happened. (I remember once having a discussion with some poms who swore blind that the characters in Captain Pugwash had names like “Roger the Cabin Boy”, “Master Bates” and “Able Seaman Stains”, when in fact it is an urban myth.)
He also discovers that women who have men write their personal ads have more success at attracting a man than if they wrote it themselves.
All of this and more is in a great book called Quirkology. Dr Wiseman also has a Quirkology website and be sure to watch the videos. “The Prediction” might keep you guessing for a minute or two.
Why the sudden fascination we psychologists? My daughter is studying to be one and my wife is just about to enrol in a similar course. I look forward to being there guinea pig.

My brother sent me the following story. I am not sure of the origin of it, but it sounds a little familiar. Maybe print it out and pass it on next time one of these people knocks on your door.

This morning there was a knock at my door. When I answered the door I found a well-groomed, nicely-dressed couple. The man spoke first:

John: “Hi! I’m John, and this is Mary.”

Mary: “Hi! We’re here to invite you to come kiss Hank’s arse with us.”

Me: “Pardon me?! What are you talking about? Who’s Hank, and why would I want to kiss his arse?”

John: “If you kiss Hank’s arse, he’ll give you a million dollars. If you don’t, he’ll kick the shit out of you.”

Me: “What? Is this some sort of shake-down?”

John: “NO! Hank is a billionaire philanthropist. Hank built this town. Hank OWNS this town. He can do whatever he wants, and what he wants is to give you a million dollars, but he can’t … unless you kiss his arse.”

Me: “That doesn’t make any sense.”

Mary: “Who are you to question Hank’s gift? Don’t you want a million dollars? Isn’t it worth a little kiss on the arse?”

Me: “Well maybe, if it’s legit, but …”

John: “Then come kiss Hank’s arse with us.”

Me: “Do you kiss Hank’s arse often?”

Mary: “Oh yes, all the time.”

Me: “And has he given YOU a million dollars?”

John: “Well no. You don’t actually get the money until you … leave town.” Read the rest of this entry »

“It’s no fun lying here starving to death, I just want to go to sleep and not wake up”. Those words were said by my father a few days ago. He is dieing of stomach cancer and the tumour is so large there is no room for food. He is slowly wasting away to nothing and some time in the next fews days his body will give up. If this was happening to a dog you would put it out of its misery and that would be acceptable. However if we were to end my father’s suffering and help him in his desire to go to sleep and not wake up we would be charged with a crime.

Our legal system is based on the Judeo-Christian moral code and since the bible says “Though shalt not kill” then we interpret all killing as a crime. Well almost. God likes a good bit of smiting and occassionally commands his followers to kill others and of course, if your government commands you to kill, that is acceptable as well. So if my father was a perfectly healthy innocent civilian, walking down the street in Bahgdad, the government would deem it acceptable to kill him  with a bomb dropped on him from 40,000 feet (as collatoral damage in the War on Terror).  However as an unhealthy citizen of Australia, suffering from a terminal disease, which is leading to a long and painful death, he gets no relief. Our laws say it is wrong to end his suffering even though he has requested it. After all, life is sacred.

The law sometimes has a very perverse view of right or wrong and it is always the innocent who suffer the most.

It’s a fine line between pleasure and pain, and much like hitting your head against a brick wall, an Outward Bound course feels good when you stop.

Over the course of nine days a group of eight particpants and two instructors navigated by land feature and compass bearing through open forest, farmland and thick tropical rainforest. Carrying old style rations (mostly tins and heavy fresh fruit and vegetables)and all of our water for each day, the going was tough in places and it was meant to be.
The story goes that Outward Bound was founded by Kurt Hahn who wondered why so many fit young merchant seaman were dying in lifeboats in 1941, whilst their older colleagues were surviving. He determined that the young sailors had not experienced enough hardship and set about establishing courses to introduce them to hardship and toughen them up.
So the course is meant to push people outside of their comfort zone and has a lot of hardship for hardship sake. For example, when navigating, we were forced to go directly across country when the destination was accessible by walking along the road.

Among the challenges were abseiling 35m out of a tree, climbing a large swinging ladder while connected to your partner, paddling the length of Toonumbar Dam, performing community service and spending 24 hours alone in the bush.
We also played some of those silly games you play in those corporate development courses. I say ’silly’ because the games themselves are ’silly’ by design. It is how the game is debriefed that the power of the game shines through. Unfortunately we were let down in this respect. There was no real debreifing model that was followed and as a result people merely talked about what they did, not how they felt when they were doing it, the other times in life they feel the same way and how they might do things differently in future. As a result the level of personal development within the group was nowhere near what it could have been and that was disappointing. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week as part of my Outward Bound course, we performed a community service job. The job in question was helping to clear Water Hyacinth off Toonumbar Dam near Kyogle. The job was supervised by Craig Gascoigne, a local asparagus farmer who loves kayaking on the dam.

When Craig saw the weed taking over the dam and clogging up his kayaking playground he figure something needed to be done. When he heard that a “Licence to Pollute” application had been lodged with DECC to permit aerial spraying on the dam with herbicide, he feared that the native plants would be killed as well. He then set about physically removing the plant himself.

Hundred of hours and tonnes of weed later, the job continues, although the scale of the problem has reduced dramatically. One of our party said of Craig, “You always say to yourself, ‘Someone ought to do something about that.’ Well, I’ve just met a someone.”

Craig is a typical Aussie larrikin and reminds me a bit of Steve Irwin, enough for me the christen him “The Hyacinth Hunter”. By co-incidence, Craig is also a bush poet and entertained us with a few yarns before we went on our way.

As a tribute to Craig I have come out of poetry retirement and penned The Hyacinth Hunter which I hope will inspire Craig to carry on his good work.

I have just finished reading two books by Nick McCamley about bunkers and underground factories. Secret Underground Cities covers the history of the large underground military facilities that were built in England during WWII. I have visited the facility at Monkton Farleigh and once stayed in a house in Chislehurst that had an entrance to one of these facilities in its back garden. The book shows how largely these facilities were failures and cost huge amounts of money, often 20 times the original estimates. If nothing else it is a good study of poor project management. The book is not just dry history and contains the occasional anecdote. I particularly the story of the workers who clocked on when going underground, clocked off when they came to the surface, and were paid for the hours in between. Little did the timekeeper know, but some of these men had found another exit and were sneaking of to a second job for most of the day. Read the rest of this entry »

 And dealing with Hewlett Packard is nothing like good customer service.

Below is part of my response to a customer survey they sent me following a recent hardware problem. Toward the end you will realise why I has posted it on the web site.

I bought a DeskJet 3940 which had a faulty power supply. I reported the fault on line. The pulldown menu had no option for DeskJet so I selected business printer.
I received a mail back from the support staff saying they only supported LaserJets, and giving me a number to call. Rather than passing the job onto the appropriate department they closed the job. This will make their closure rates look good, but it is not good customer service.
I called the number and spoke to a customer service rep. I gave him the number allocated by the other team and he then proceeded to tell me that I must have a LaserJet, not a DeskJet because the job number I had given him came from the LaserJet area. He asked me if I had the printer in front of me and when I said “No” he said “I think you will find it is a LaserJet.” The basis for this assumption was that he could find no reference to a 3940 in his database and since the job reference came from the LaserJet area, I must have a LaserJet. I know that users don’t usually know as much as technicians, but I should have been given the benefit of the doubt on this one. It was only after I told him to go to the HP Australia web site and type 3940 in the search box, did he believe I had a DeskJet.
Read the rest of this entry »