Using cash from the AWB for appeasement

Why is the question "is there any proof that ministers knew what the AWB was doing" by pouring millions into Saddam's pockets?

The real question should be "how is the government keeping us safe"?

We were told by the PM with breathless urgency at the time that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical weapons, and was within months of having nuclear weapons. The smoking gun could be a "mushroom cloud" with thousands, or millions of casualties. But now, we are told, no minister knew that the AWB was shovelling money Saddam's way to protect its contracts, even though the negotiations over the contracts were a major issue at the time. That would be like British ministers in 1939 saying they didn't know Hitler was going to invade Poland, because no-one sent them the memo.

Who have we got for a PM, John Winston Howard, or John Neville Chamberlain?

Models of marriage

Same-sex unions are legal in some countries, and some people want the description "marriage" to be used.

Just a question: why are same sex marriages limited to only 2 people? What convention or law imposes this limit? There are pretty obvious reasons why marriage is limited to 2 people, a man and a woman, although there have been some well-known cases of open marriages involving 3 people, eg H.G.Wells (one man and 2 women) and Ayn Rand (one woman and 2 men). But for same-sex unions, there seems to be less reason for this restriction. Or is it the case that even the people who want same-sex marriage have an idea of what a real marriage is, but don't want to admit it?

Too much cricket is finally enough

For years now, there have been debates about how to compare cricket statistics from the past with now. The wise words are always said that this is impossible because players from yesteryear never played as many games as they do now. Bradman could never have scored 10,000 test runs.

Well, now we know, we have reached saturation point in cricket. There are so many games now that players have to be rested, lest they suffer mental and/or physical breakdown. Players even ask to be excused from international games. So cricket records will now reach a limit and the statisticians can go to work.

Equal work for equal pay

The Australian Open tennis tournament is the sport du jour at the moment.

I have always wondered why the men play best of 5 sets at grand slam tournaments, but women still play best of 3. This is despite that fact that women have received equal prizemoney since the 70's and 80's (The Australian Open first offered equal prizemoney in 1984).

First of all, this means women's tennis can be very boring. How many women's finals at grand slam tournaments have been non-events, with 6-1, 6-1 walkovers finished in less than an hour, leaving large crowds with nothing to do but go home early and read books to the kids? The exciting 5 set marathons of men's tennis can never happen.
This has to change. There was a time at the Olympics that only men ran in long distance races, but now there are women's marathons, women's weightlifting, and woe betide any man who criticises women's rugby or boxing. Admittedly, Olympic swimming is still also behind the times. I believe that only women swim the 800m races and only men the 1,500m, but why? Come on gals try to keep up!!

What do you call German?

Can you please explain this to me:
The names for countries are similar, if slightly different in each language (eg England, Angleterre, Engeland etc)
However, the words for "german" seem to be completely different in each of the European languages, ie:

In german: deutsch, Deutschland
In dutch: duits, duitsland (of course dutch is close to low german)
In english: german, Germany
In french: allemand
In italian: tedesco, Germania
In russian: nemetz, germania

Why the difference? It must be something to do with the history of the formation of the German nation.

West frightened by the poor

The international community has just pledged $2.5 billion to fight
bird flu (Jan 19: "Cash flows as experts warn of bird flu's cost").
The wealthy west is terrified by the sight of sick children living on
poor farms in the third world.

Here's an idea: try to relieve poverty for pity's and morality's sake,
not just because we are afraid that the poor and sick will bring
crashing down the comfortable castle we in the west are living in.

The high cost of losing our religion

Julia Baird (SMH 19th January - "The high cost of losing our
religion") laments that the enlightened activists and feminists of the
70's did not take the time to revolutionise the churches at the same
time as changing society.

Excuse me, but what I see now are magazines telling teenage girls what
to eat, wear and do in order to please their boyfriends. Prominent
businessmen and sportsmen marry blonde models rather than challenging
life partners. The lifestyles and life responsibilities of most women
haven't really changed much since the 70's. Symbols of passive women
as objects abound.

Maybe Julia Baird should spend more time re-energising feminism and
worrying about falling attendances at her church of feminism.

Install GnuCash

I installed GnuCash in Edubuntu, using the instructions in Ubuntu Help (note that I had to enable the universe repository:

How do I install an accounting application (GnuCash)?

1.Make sure the universe repository is enabled. (See How do I add Universe and Multiverse?)
2.Install the gnucash package with Synaptic (See How do I use Synaptic to install packages?)

Gnome Desktop Environment (universe) gnucash

3.Remove some unnecessary directories and files.

sudo rm -fr /usr/share/gnome/apps/Applications/

4.Start a new desktop configuration file in the /usr/share/applications directory.

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/GnuCash.desktop

A blank file called GnuCash.desktop opens in gedit.

5.Add the following lines to the new file.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=GnuCash
Comment=GnuCash Personal Finance
Exec=gnucash
Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gnucash/gnucash-icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;Office;
/>
6.Save the file and close gedit. (See sample/GnuCash.desktop_gnucash for an example.)

7.To open GnuCash, choose Applications → Office → GnuCash.

Enter special language characters in Windows (c)

Select regional and language settings in the Control Panel and then languages and details.

As well as EN (Australia), add EN (United States) and select the US International keyboard.
With the US International keyboard, you can enter special languages characters for language which use only latin characters. This requires pressing 2 keys in sequence as follows:

Press this key Then press this key Resultant character
' (APOSTROPHE) C Ç
'(APOSTROPHE) e, y, u, i, o, a é, ý, ú, í, ó, á
"(QUOTATION MARK) e, u, i, o, a ë, ü, ï, ö, ä
`(ACCENT GRAVE) e, u, i, o è, ù, ì, ò
~(TILDE) o, n õ, ñ
^(CARET) e, u, i, o, a ê, û, î, ô, â

(ref: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;306560&sd=tech)

This is more practical when you are using the same (US) keyboard for all these languages. On the other hand, if you selected French as the language, with a french keyboard, the layout os azerty instead of qwerty.

Now I have to work out how to select the Russian phonetic keyboard for Windows (c). Under Ubuntu linux, I was able to select the Russian phonetic keyboard, which tries to preserve the keys which are common between Latin and Russian keyboards (which the conventional Russian keyboard layout does not)

nature vs nurture

Attributing human behaviour to nature or nuture seems to be something which is hotly debated, on very little evidence.

An example is female characteristics. Many feminists would say these are learned from an early age and are not inherited. If this is the case, they are learned at a very early age, so it is impossible to prove this.

On the other hand, is there a "gay" gene? Some people say there is, so there is no such thing as indoctrination into a lifestyle. Again, has anyone seen any evidence of this?

Play .ram audio files from website

In order to play .ram files using Edubuntu, I installed RealPlayer10:

Download realplayer_10.0.6-0.0-i386.deb

cd ~/Desktop

sudo apt-get install libstdc++5 (infact I had already done this step when I installed the Flock browser)

sudo dpkg -i realplayer_10.0.6-0.0-i386.deb

Crime novels are really plays

Most of the popular crime novels have become successful plays, movies or TV shows.
When you think about it, this is natural, because a crime novel is really a drama: the story depends on a narrative, and it usually takes place over a limited time in a particular place. Apart from the puzzle of the crime, the interest is in the reactions of the characters to the events.
All of this fits well into drama, although most crime fictions seems to start life as novels or short stories.