Archive for August, 2007
August 25 2007: Hot Is Not A Descriptor
Filed under Media with 12 Comments
There are advertising posters up all around Melbourne at the moment, advertising the start of a new television series starring David Duchovny. Titled Californication, the tagline is “How hot can it get?”
I don’t know about anyone else, but when it comes to David Duchovny, “hot” isn’t the first thing that springs to my mind. “Fox Mulder” perhaps, or “Your wife so severely downgraded when she married you”, or even “Evolution was the worst comedic alien movie ever”.
“Hot” comes in at about…last on my list of things I think about when I think of David Duchovny - and that’s only when I’m intoxicated and experiencing the full effect of beer goggles. Then I pass out and that thought is driven out of my mind. And the world is a better place because David Duchovny isn’t soiling my brain. Huzzah.
August 24 2007: The Death of Education
Filed under Family & Online with 15 Comments
In fifth grade, one of my many projects of the year was an investigation into the dairy farming industry in Australia.
For my research, I called up all the dairy and cattle associations in the country, and asked them to send me all the brochures and information they had. I also spent hours in the public library poring over books and encyclopaedias. I even managed to locate a video about milk pasteurisation in Australia.
The finished project was amazing, if I do say so myself. Colourful, with pictures cut out from the brochures I received. Informative, with all the facts I pulled out from various sources in the library. Well received, because I had put everything in my own words, and made the work my own. Most importantly, was the fact that I’ve managed to retain all the knowledge - to this day, I can tell you off the top of my head that the four stomachs of a cow are called the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum.
So with that in mind, I wonder how much my brother actually learns and retains from doing his school projects on the Internet. I love the Internet, but the fact remains that it is primarily a shallow medium. You scan the web, you don’t read it. How could anyone possibly retain everything they read on the Internet when they’re not properly engaging with the information offered?
It’s not just my brother either - there are millions of school kids around the world entirely relying on Wikipedia for their information. Heck, high school and college students do it too. We’re the tl;dr generation.
The Internet may very well signal the end of effective and long-lasting education and knowledge.
August 23 2007: Saving On Bread
Filed under Money with 7 Comments
What many people don’t realise is that it’s very easy to save on necessities such as food. Take bread products as an example. You could conceivably expect the average family of four to go through a loaf of bread in two days. With normal (white supermarket-bought sandwich) loaves costing approximately three to four dollars each, this adds up to about $800 a year on bread alone.
However, what many supermarkets do is discount their bakery items after a certain time, for quick sale so they don’t go stale. My local supermarket (Safeway Woolworths) discounts after 8pm. For every two hours after that, they take another 50% off the marked price. So you go from $4…to $3 at 8pm, to $1.50 at 10pm, to 75 cents at midnight.
Thus, after grocery shopping late last night, I walked away with a twelve pack of cinnamon donuts, a loaf of fruit bread, and a loaf of white bread for four dollars. They’re still four days off their expiry date, and were actually baked yesterday morning. I saved eight dollars.
If you count that as saving ten dollars a week (at the very least), you’re saving five hundred or more dollars a year. Imagine what you could do with that!