Tetherd Cow Ahead

The British arms manufacturer BAE Systems (Corporate Slogan: Real Breadth; Real Performance; Real Delivery) has come up with the quaint idea of Environmentally Friendly Munitions. That’s right folks – Green Weapons.

BAE’s range includes reduced-lead bullets, reduced-smoke grenades and rockets with fewer toxins. BAE’s vehicles boast lower emissions, and BAE aim to recycle or compost waste or used explosives.

War is usually hell, but with BAE, War is Health! No fear of dying of lead poisoning or smoke inhalation on the battlefield when you shop with BAE!

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Thanks Sean!

Don’t forget to vote for my post What I Believe But Cannot Prove in The Philosophy Blog War!

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As much as I love living in this country, there’s no getting away from it: our political landscape is just one big petty no-holds-barred squabble for the attention of the stupid uneducated voter.

Consider the new proposal put forward toward today by the increasingly desperate and pathetic Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley: Australia should require visitors to complete an ‘Aussie Values’ Statement before they can get into The Wide Brown Land.

This from the head of the political party for which I have voted for most of my adult life.

I cringe in embarrassment.

Some of the ‘Aussie Values’ that Mr Beazley and his cronies have somehow settled on with no consultation at all with Aussies such as myself are: “Respect for different religions and cultures, for the equal treatment of women, and for hard work and respect for Australia’s institutions, including its democracy, laws, courts, parliaments, armed forces and police“.

OK, let’s see. ‘Respect for hard work‘?* You’d have to throw out half the people who are already here. ‘Respect for the parliament’? I lost that years ago.

Way to go Mr Beazley. Maybe just to completely clarify our status to the rest of the world each of us should hang a sign around our necks saying ‘Yokel’.

And ‘respect for different religions and cultures’ should have appended ‘as long as they’re not the indigenous aboriginal population’, surely?

What this is all about, of course, is keeping the flickering flame that is the Fear of Terrorism alive in the Australian psyche. Because everyone has learned that the way to get elected these days is to Cut Interest Rates and Keep Our Country Safe From Terrorism!

So, all you terrorists, you just better watch out, because next time you try getting into our Fair Country, you might have to get past a form like this:

UPDATE: After a full day of this on the news, I am even more embarrassed. I feel I have to say that I unreservedly apologize to people of other cultures who find this idea offensive. Even though I’ve made fun of it, I don’t find it funny at all and I am deeply ashamed to be a part of a society who has these kinds of small-minded thoughts.
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* Although I suppose technically you could respect it without actually doing it.

Around the inner-city burrough in which I live, the favoured method for getting motorists to reduce their speed is The Speed Hump. The Speed Hump is a plague upon humanity. It is up there with the Biblical Plagues: A Plague of Locusts, A Plague of Boils, and a Plague of Speed Humps. See how easily that rolls off the tongue? I really hate The Speed Hump. For many reasons, but among them:

1: Speed Humps do not seem to impede in the least all the 4WD owners, who are the worst offenders. Speed humps? Ha! That’s as close as they get to actually using four wheel drive! They love the speed hump. It justifies in their brain the reason they spend twice as much on petrol as the rest of us.

2: Speed Humps really screw up the suspension on tiny gas-saving cars like mine, which have small wheelbases and don’t have dead-kangaroo-height clearance. Every time I go over one my poor little Smart just bottoms out. Ker-thunk!

3: Speed Humps cause people to accelerate loudly once they’ve cleared the bump, effectively wrecking the concept anyway: “WooHoo, now I’m OFF the Speed Hump I’m going to really fang* it!!!”

But do not let it be said that the Reverend makes light of road safety! Yes, Speed Kills! and here at The Cow we endorse responsible driving so I am proposing a new concept in traffic pacifying.

Goats.

Yes, goats. I propose that we release herds of goats throughout urban traffic routes. You doubt my methods? Then read this†!

I rest my case.

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*An Australian term which I’m sure my US readers can figure out.

†Thanks Pil! (I love my readers)

I remember reading an interview with Madonna some years back in which she claimed that she had given up all the wacky belief systems she’d been into and now had taken up Kabbalah. ‘Cos, like, that’s not a wacky belief system, right?

So of course she wouldn’t endorse some loopy scheme involving pouring ‘blessed’ water into lakes polluted with nuclear waste to ‘cleanse’ them, right?

And she wouldn’t be lobbying the British Government to approve the scheme, right?

Yes, loyal Acowlytes, I can see that you’ve grasped the rhetorical nature of those questions. Madonna is indeed trying to persuade government officials that enchanted magic water will eliminate the problem of radioactive contamination.

Here’s a quote from Madonna in which she casually attempts to hint that, in spite of what we all thinks she spends her days doing, she’s actually been hangin’ out with the geek crowd:

“I mean, one of the biggest problems that exists right now in the world is nuclear waste,” she said. “That’s something I’ve been involved with for a while with a group of scientists – finding a way to neutralise radiation, believe it or not.”

Yep, Madonna has been beavering away behind the scenes in the lab with her egg-head homies solving all the world’s problems while you have been doing what? Just pirating her mp3s and dropping E, I’ll wager.

It occurs to me that there is a scientific equation that can be solved here. Madonna is rich and, with very little acumen about just how it might be done, wants to save the world. On the other side of the plus sign, the Steorn crackpots are looking for gullible air-heads with plenty of spare cash. If only someone would put them together – then they might amuse one another for years and eventually disappear up each other’s magnetic vortex.

You know, I really hate to admit it, but in light of all this I have really developed a new respect for Bill Gates.

Speaking of laughing…

A company based in Ireland going by the name of Steorn claims to have invented a method for generating free energy. Oh dear. The old Something-For-Nothing perpetual motion delusion comes up for another breath.

You can see a comprehensively information-free piece of hype from the company here in which various Steorn personnel demonstrate the benefits of regular visits to Blarney Castle. Here’s CEO Sean McCarthy explaining why existing energy sources are problematic:

“Most of the hydrocarbons in the world, oil gas and so on, happen to be in dangerous places, they happen to be in places that are politically and economically unstable…”

Er, duh Sean. They happen to be in those places? Like there’s some kind of coincidence at work there buddy?

He goes on to divulge the secret of Steorn’s incredible new accomplishment:

“The technology is the ability to construct certain magnetic fields, that when you travel around the magnetic fields starting and stopping at the same position, you’ve suffered a net gain of energy. Quite simply the analogy would be, you walk to the top of the hill and then you walk back down to the bottom of the hill, but in doing that you’ve gained energy.”

Wow, cool analogy. Like, I’m convinced. So, if I’m understanding it correctly (bear with me, I’m not really good with all this scientific stuff) putting it another way it’s like opening doors in a hallway, and then shutting them again, and in doing so you’ve gained energy! Or, maybe, like sticking a pipe-cleaner through one ear, pulling it right through your head and out the other ear, and in doing so you’ve gained energy!

If you’re falling behind with all this technical stuff, don’t worry – the Steorn movie includes a little piece of animation that clarifies the principles at work. In it, a little green whirlpool goes round and round between some magnets:

See? Could the science behind this astonishing discovery possibly be any more persuasive?

This from Richard Walshe, Steorn’s Marketing Manager:

“There’s an ecological advantage to it, absolutely. There’s a cost saving to it, but ultimately for me, the advantage is convenience. The advantage is never having to plug your mobile phone in.”

OK. So Steorn has invented a revolutionary way of creating entirely free energy thus instantly solving all the world’s industrial, travel, pollution and communications problems as well as knocking global warming on the head (not to mention rewriting the tenets of physics in the process) and Richard is most excited about the fact that he won’t have to remember to stick his phone on charge?

I guess it’s not that unusual for the marketing arm to completely miss the point. One does wonder, though, how Steorn, with the best product EVER (forget sliced bread, forget the mousetrap, forget the wheel), has managed end up with a nitwit like Richard as their strategist.

Then again, maybe the members of Steorn are crazy like foxes. The company has taken out an ad in The Economist challenging scientists to prove them wrong. You’ve gotta give them points for chutzpah. With some major scientific hoo-hah and a few serious-sounding names in the fray they could spin this hogwash out for, hey, maybe a couple of years and bring all kinds of investment money on board.

And they’re no strangers to that game.

My advice? Before you throw your hard-earned cash into Steorn’s Magical Magnetic Moolah Magnifier, take a trip to The Museum of Unworkable Devices and ponder the old saw ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’.

It holds just as true for the Laws of Physics and investment strategies as it does for interpersonal relationships.

Every Saturday morning, in the park near my house, a dozen or so people gather to stand around in a circle and laugh. Now it strikes me that if you need to set special time aside to laugh, there is something seriously wrong with your life.