Things script-writers have taught me – Ep 2

That all is not lost in the redemption of psychopathic killers. It appears that they suddenly develop empathy at the very moment they are ending your life by strangling, poisoning or gutting you like a fish. They show this empathy by hugging you, and soothing you with ‘ssshhh’s’ or quiet, kind words, as you die as a result of their ministrations.

Case in point : Just about every serial killer I have seen on tv recently. But, if you want a specific example, the killer in The Returned (French version)

Things script-writers have taught me – Ep 1

It has been a while, hasn’t it. Sorry bout that…what can I say, I’ve been busy. I can imagine quite a few of my friends laughing heartily at the moment. 🙂 Anyway, I’m back now, with a new resolve to bore the crap out of you on a more regular basis.

I thought to ease myself back in I might do a series on things that I have learned from script-writers. Some context…my older brother and I get together one night every weekend for a night of eating junk, talking bollocks and catching up on a bit of tele. Now, we both consider ourselves erudite fellows and, as a result, often find ourselves chuckling (read “yelling at the tele”) at the laziness of script-writers. But, on reflection, given that I lecture at Murdoch University, I thought it might be better if I turned these episode into learning experiences, with appropriate illustrations from current TV series…so here goes.

Things script-writers have taught me – Ep 1

Always communicate any plans to over-come the bad guys telepathically because, no matter where or under what circumstances you do it, if you talk about your plans with anyone else, the bad guys (or one of their minions) will just happen to be in a position to overhear them.

However if you happen to be the bad guy, talk about your plans as often and as loudly as you wish. No-one will ever overhear you, and even if they do, they will conveniently be killed before they can pass them on to anyone who can do anything about it.

Case in point : Just about every episode of Salem.

Is the whole world going down a sink-hole??

Man, I am starting to get seriously worried now. These things just keep happening. Maybe we need some kind of government action against sinkholes, they seem at least as dangerous as sharks!

And it seems like I’m going to have plenty more to write about on this highly entertaining blog of mine. He he.

Stay tuned!!! 🙂

Merry Christmas!

Hi “Insert your name here”, once again my laziness has overtaken me and I am reduced to wishing my most amazing of friends a Merry Christmas via my blog. But please take this as a personal greeting from me to you…and, come a bit closer so I can whisper, remember that you are more special that anyone else that reads my blog. 🙂

Seriously, I hope you all have a fabulous Christmas and a fantastic 2014! And thank you all for your love, best wishes and support through what has been a really tough year.

Love and best wishes

Warren

What a bunch of assho……charming individuals. :-)

Merry Christmas, all you folks taking care of children or the elderly. Your help is, well, not actually appreciated that much at all apparently.

“While the national affairs rollercoaster roared around the fate of Holden and amplified everyone’s feelings on an imminent post-industrial Australia, the Coalition set about unloading two pre-Christmas nasties – it proceeded to withdraw and redirect funds set aside for wage increases for childcare workers and aged care workers. Merry Christmas folks.

The development this week followed an earlier decision to get rid of the low-income superannuation contribution scheme, which provided a concession for workers on $37,000 a year or less. Despite the imperative of finding budget cuts to ensure long-term fiscal sustainability, the Coalition has retained the generous superannuation tax concessions for high-income workers, including of course, for politicians, some of whom are still on the rolled-gold pre-2004 parliamentary super scheme.

The practical effect of the policy shift is that Australia’s lowest paid workers will be punished for saving for their retirement – which presumably makes them more likely to end up having to rely on the pension. Quite apart from the obvious inequity, it’s poor policy. The roiling news cycle largely swallowed that one too – it pretty much sank without trace.”

Seriously???

You know, when I started writing about sink-holes, it was a piss-take. I didn’t expect it to actually provide enough material to sustain a blog…but it has! 🙂

Oh, and exactly how did they know that the fish were flipping out? 🙂

http://www.news.com.au/world/fish-flip-out-as-sinkhole-swallows-pond-in-sanica-bosnia/story-fndir2ev-1226769111072

F*&king stupidity – an update. :-)

I just thought I’d update you on the latest f*&king stupidity from the US about ObamaCare…cos I know you are all interested. 🙂 I’m thinking that after you read this you might think stupidity is not the right word.

Since yesterday, I have learned that the US version of our Medicare is a joint state and federally-funded programme called Medicaid and it is only for the lowest income earners…and I mean low. A woman who earned more that $1200 a month wasn’t eligible, for example. That’s $14,400 a year, to save you doing the maths. 🙂 And ObamaCare doesn’t kick in until a higher income level, so there is a whole group of people who don’t fit into either system….in fact about 8 million apparently. So, to cover this gap, the federal government has said they’ll fully fund an increase to the Medicaid programme for 3 years and, after that, the states will take on an increased share of the extra costs, building up to a maximum of 10% by 2020. So just to clarify, Medicaid is jointly funded by the state and federal governments of America, and the expansion of the programme will be fully funded by the federal government for 3 years and funded 90% by them after that.

Now, here are a few point from a report done by the American Academy of Family Physicians….

1) If all 50 states implemented the Medicaid expansion, it would cover an additional 21.6 million of the 41.2 million currently uninsured adults (or 52%).

2)The additional cost of implementing the Medicaid expansion is estimated to be only a 2.8 percent increase from what states would have spent between 2014 and 2022 without the health reform law.

2.8% increase in costs to give healthcare cover to an additional 21.6 million people…sounds a no-brainer right?

Wrong!!!! 26 states have indicated they will not sign up for the increased funding…anyone care to guess which party is in government in each of these states?

F*&king stupidity!

For any of you who haven’t been following the shutdown in the US, I’ll give you a quick update. Obamacare is a law that was passed to ensure that everyone in the US could have affordable healthcare. They do have a Medicare-kind of system over there but it is very limited, apparently, so you really need to have private healthcare. And even if you can afford private healthcare, the providers are very good at denying claims…in fact they train their people to always so ‘no’ first time around. For a good analysis of the US system, watch Michael Moore’s documentary, Sicko.

Anyway, I digress. So, the law was passed and was due to come into effect on the 1st of October 2013. The Republicans think that this bill is the worst thing to ever happen in the US…apparently worse than slavery, the Great Depression or the Twin Tower’s attack…so they decided that they would block government funding, by not passing the Budget, unless the Democrat agreed to postpone the implementation date. The Democrats said ‘go to hell in a hand-basket’, and so funding was blocked and the government doesn’t have the money to pay for lots of it’s staff. This means that 1000’s and 1000’s of US public servants have been sent home on leave without pay.

The Republicans are accusing the Democrats of not being willing to negotiate, while the Democrats are saying that the law has been passed democratically by congress, that it has survived around 40 attempts by the Republican to overturn it, that Barack Obama won a second term as president, with a bigger percentage of the vote, after the law was passed and that the law has been confirmed by the US Supreme Court as being constitutional, so it has had plenty of negotiation. And I think they probably have a point. 🙂

I think the stupidity of the Republican’s position is exemplified by this interview exchange between a TV host and a Republican strategist…

TV Host (TVH) – Why are you so against Obamacare?

Republican Strategist (RS) – Because it is one of the worst things to happen in American history. And it is unconstitutional.

TVH – But the US Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutional.

RS (Looking totally stunned, with a ‘how dare you ask me a sensible question like that’ kind of look) – Um, yes, but it had to go all the way to the US Supreme Court for that to be decided.

I had a big WTF planned but I’ll leave it to you to determine the stupidity of this statement. Just to help you though, the Republicans were the one who took the law to the Supreme Court…and the Supreme Court is the only body who can rule on Constitutional matters. 🙂

Good on you, Maryland!

A while ago I wrote to the Governor of Maryland, in the US, congratulating him on repealing the death penalty in that state. I received a reply from him the other day and this was the central paragraph of it…

“In 2008, the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, led by former United States Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, found that the administration of the death penalty clearly showed racial bias and that no administrative fixes could end the racial disparities.  In addition, it reported that the cost to taxpayers of pursuing a capital case is three times as much as the costs of pursuing a non-death penalty homicide conviction.  Lastly, the Commission determined that the risk of executing an innocent person was extremely high and that the statistics did not prove that the death penalty was a deterrent.  The death penalty did not make us stronger or more secure as a people. Nor did the death penalty make our laws more effective or more just. Capital punishment was expensive, and it did not work.”

Every time you think that the US has gone mad, they do something like this, which, to me, is amazing. And I’m not talking so much about the decision as the rationale behind it. Looking at it from a purely technical perspective, it is a really well thought out argument that covers bases for just about any stakeholder. It doesn’t make you safer, it’s not fair, it’s expensive, it’s not guaranteed to get the right person and it can’t be fixed…there is something in this for everyone, just about.

I know you may think I’ve gone crazy bothering to blog about something like this, but, in a world where sound debate and argument is sadly lacking, you need to appreciate the good ones when they come along. 🙂

A message to all the young folk out there.

I was chatting to a friend of mine recently who lamented the fact that I hadn’t posted a blog for a while…which was really surprising because I didn’t think that anyone actually read it. 🙂 So I  thought that I’d start again. And as it turns out, I’m reading a perfect book, chock full of blogging material. It’s called The Owners Manual for the Brain, and what it does is give you the latest neuroscience on a range of a topics and then gives you practical applications for it. For example there are sections on how sleep affects the brain, how our brain develops as we age, what we know about how the brain repairs itself, how we learn etc. etc. I think you get the picture.

The section on the teenage / early adult brain is fascinating. First of all, there is lots of evidence that suggests that the brain doesn’t stop developing until we are 25-ish, not around 18 as I think most of us would have thought. During the period from early teens to 25 we learn faster and easier than at any other time of our life. Our brain prepares itself for all the learning we are going to do (potentially) by being the biggest it is going to be at around age 13. Combined with all this neural capacity is a massive influx of hormones and dopamine, which all leads to a desire to learn by experimentation…the riskier the better. Sounds like fun hey! The bad news is that between 13 and 25 our brain sheds lots of this grey matter, in effect the excess is pruned, if we don’t use it by learning stuff. The good news is that, at the same time it is laying down more white matter, which increases the permanence and speed of access of what we have learned.

The problem is that nature is a contrary Miss. At the same time that you youngsters are all ready to go out and experiment, the part of your brain that gives you judgment, the pre-frontal cortex, is TINY! So you have all this capacity and desire to learn…and no idea about what and how to learn. You also have incredibly poor judgement and assessment of risk at this time as well. In short, you are a disaster waiting to happen.:-)

So this has all been a long, rambling way of saying two things. First of all, don’t waste this period of your life, learn as much as you possibly can. And secondly, listen to us old bastards…we know what we are talking about, and you don’t! Ta ta for now. 🙂