Weirdest question

I was thining about the weirdest question I have ever been asked at the reference desk recently...

And the winner goes along the lines of:

Dene: "Hello reference desk Dene speaking".
Caller: "Hello, yes I'm wondering how many people have died".
Dene: Silence........."Pardon? Died where? During a war... The road toll....".
Caller: "No, I was just wondering how many people have died....ever".

But stranger still, a quick Google search managed to find a site that had worked it out based on a long complicated formula. I gave the guy the figure, and he was satisfied.

That brings me to my next weirdest question. The same guy rang back a week later and asked how many people have died in the past week so he could update his figures.

QANTAS Slash Jobs

QANTAS slashed jobs today in a bid to protect profit. Apparently they have downgraded their profit forecast to somewhere between $100 Million and $200 Million.

What right do big companies like this have to make multimillion dollar profits like this when everyone else is expected to do it tough?

Blogging...

Isn't it funny how blogging is one of those things you never get around to... but when you do, you end up posting several posts all at once... then nothing for a few months.

News Flash

Research shows that smoking while pregnant harms your baby.

Ok, so it's not new, and everyone knows this fact.

So why do so many Australian women smoke when they are pregnant. I see it almost on a daily basis.

And every second car has someone smoking in it, with children in the back.

How can people be so stupid when they know the damage it's doing?

If you smoke while pregnant you should be charged with child abuse.

It's Cold!

We've lived in Australia for just over a year, and it seems we've become acclimatised already.

Today was cold - 17 degrees. The heater's cranked up tonight, as it's supposed to get down to around 5 or 6 degrees.

Coming from Dunedin it seems really odd - 17 degrees would be more than you could hope for at this time of year! 5 or 6 would usually be the high!

How Will They Cope?

Last week Telecom New Zealand announced their annual operating profit fell 15.5% for the last financial year.

Apparently they made a disappointing $NZ713,000,000.

However will they cope with only making three quarters of a billion dollars? I guess they'll have to overcharge even more.

Polution

The footage from the Beijing Olympics has amazed me, with shots of smoggy skylines. The amount of pollution China produces is wrong.

No matter what the rest of the world does to combat global warming, it doesn't matter as long as China does nothing.

I know they have cleaned up their act for the Olympics, but I bet it all goes back to normal right after the closing ceremony.

It does make you think, if they have cut pollution down for the Olympics, how bad must it be in a regular day?

Google Street View

Good on the people at Google, for coming up with another world first - Google Street View. Australia is the 3rd country in the world to be imaged by Google's team of magical cars.

For anyone who doesn't know what it is, a team of cars drove every street in the country with digitals cameras mounted on all angles. All of the images were stuck together and you can get a 360 degree view of any street in the country.


On tonights news there was the typical news report when something new like this comes out. The camera crew went into Brisbane and asked people what they thought of it.

Most people seemed to think it was a breach of their privacy. It amazed me how stupid people are - most of them seemed to give off the impression that they thought there were web cams pointed at everyones house.

Now I've been outside for about an hour and looked everywhere, and still can't find that damned webcam!

The State of Television...And My Life

Tonight I sat down to watch some telly. We have the full Foxtel package which comes with 1000s of channels. Well, probably really around 70 or so.

But amazing with all those channels there's nothing on (hmmmm... maybe there's a song in that).

So while I was surfing through the channels I came across Celebrity Wife Swap. Just when I thought TV couldn't get any worse!

But then I got thinking, what would make a funny swap? Maybe Ozzy Osbourne could have Martha Stewart move in? Or Marge Simpson could move in with Peter Griffin on Family Guy.

Then I though... what the hell am I thinking? I'm truly bored and have no life! And to make things worse, I've even blogged it!

Winter in Oz

As a kiwi who has been living in Aussie for just over a year, I'm still getting used to the weather in South East Queensland.

It's the middle of winter, and usually at home in Dunedin I'd be suffering through below zero temperatures, snow, rain and hail. And that's just a good day.

Today in Brisbane the temperature was in the mid 20s - that's a great summers day in New Zealand.

If this is winter, I can take it!

Wastage

I was recently watching a show about recycling, and was shocked at how much timber goes into making a ream of A4 copy paper. Apparently the average pine tree makes only 5 reams of copy paper, or one box.

Now think about how large a tree is, and how small a box of copy paper is. Add to that the fact that it can take 20 years for a pine tree to grow.

Now think about how much paper you use in your workplace, school or uni.

Add in another interesting fact, that each individual piece of paper takes 10 litres of water to manufacture, and copious amounts of chemicals.

I haven't even mentioned the pollution that is produced.

So next time you go to click the print button, think again before you do it. If you do really need to print, then try a print preview so you can see how many pages you are actually getting.

Humans vs Snails

I saw an interesting fact recently that snails can't resist beer.

If you leave a dish of beer out it will attract any snails in the area, who crawl in and drink until they can't drink any more. Apparently the snails will be so drunk they can't get out of the beer and drown.

Sounds like a typical night in an average Aussie pub!

Blogging

I've set myself a blogging challenge - I want to make at least one post a day. I guess there will be days where that just isn't possible, but I'll give it a crack.

I figure the hard part isn't about getting the time to do it - It's just thinking of something intelligent to say.

But most people that know me will say that it shouldn't be hard for me to find something to talk about... they will however agree on the fact that it isn't always intelligent!