Your broadcasting licence has been revoked

Rupert Murdoch, for all his many faults, deserves a medal for bravery in Australia. At least a medal for mindless persistence in the face of hopeless reality which, by many definitions, is what medals for bravery are for. Why? Because he continues to try to sell pay TV to Australians.

The offering was never great. We had two pay TV providers to start with, Foxtel and Austar. I think one bought the other or devoured it or assimilated it or something and now we have one, Foxtel, and, I can only assume, at least one satellite in geostationary orbit currently submitting its CV to TV companies and intelligence agencies in our part of the planet.

And people don't buy it. They offer introductory offers. And we don't buy it. They offer to give us the dish and set top box. And we don't buy it. They show as tantalising glimpses of the latest movies. And we don't buy it. Why? Because we can read TV guides. It's the same 3 movies over and over again for a week. And, here's the real kicker, you still get ads. You pay for the damn thing and they still feel the need to fund themselves by showing us ads. So I pay for the privilege of watching ads? I can get that for free on YouTube - and I get to skip after 5 seconds. Unless it's one of those damn 15 second ones! I refuse to buy their stuff, just on principle. Bastards!

I read an article the other day that says Australians are amongst the biggest users of illegally downloaded media on the planet. And they wonder why.

Not that our free-to-air TV offering is anything great either.

I'll show my age and open the next paragraph with the line "When I was a kid".

When I was a kid in regional Australia, we had two TV stations: the ABC (our equivalent of the BBC for my international audience) and a local or regional commercial station. We were awed by our city cousins who, we heard from whispered voices in dark corners, had access to five stations.

Now the ABC is, and was, a fine national institution and I was brought up on it: David Attenborough documentaries, Play School, Sesame Street and the kind of news that has a shelf life longer than a new chip flavour.

That's right. Lay off on the new flavours. None of them are any good. Just stick with the basic six. Honey prawn barbecue does not go well with beer! And wasabi !? What were you thinking ?

The local station was dreadful; composed, as it was, of an amalgam of whatever they could afford to buy from the big metropolitan networks, local news and advertisements for stock sales and church services. It was an absolute joke but it was a local station - you expected what you got.

Now we have national digital TV, free-to-air. Hurrah. Big banner ads. A slightly confusing marketing strategy that seems to suggest that there's a whole new station out there called FreeView (there isn't, it's just all the free to air stations banding together to advertise against Murdoch) and a choice of more than almost twenty - you heard me right (sic) - stations.

And I, foolish, naive man that I am, expected great things.

And I got my local TV station back- spread across the airwaves like the stain you so foolishly rubbed to get out of your furniture.

At least a third of the stations are wall-to-wall advertising. They're called exciting things like "Gold" or "Aspire" but they're 30 minute commercials for vacuum cleaners, food processors and exercise machines. That's it, by the way, those three products. They have been advertorialing them for as long as I've been alive and the local tip (dump, if you're an American) is as full of the discarded skeletons as ever. That's what those stations do - generate employment for tip staff.

Most of the other stations also run advertising - increasing in volume and duration and decreasing in quality as the movie goes on.

So, as far as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of the digital TV available to me is, in fact, advertising. Statistically, I think it's for (in descending order) vacuum cleaners, appliance stores offering never to be repeated offers on 50 month interest free terms that will be repeated this time next week and rug warehouses. Cars run a close fourth.

At the end of the day, I put my children to bed, I pour myself a glass of something red and kick back to enjoy ... advertising?

By the way, is there anyone actually watching those advertorial channels? Really? At the end of the day, you can't think of ANYTHING better to do than to watch people using food processors for half an hour at a time? You don't have internet access? Knitting to do? Toilets to clean? A revolver with just one chamber loaded? Who on earth watches this stuff?

That's it! I've had enough! My mission now is to cull all the stuff that's wasting my time. If you fall into any one of the following categories, your broadcasting licence is hereby revoked and your station will be closed:

1. Your entire programming is advertising - that takes out 5 stations straight away.
2. You are a direct mirror of another station - that takes out two more.
3. You specialise in replays - I think they're called "encore presentations" these days - of stuff your big brother station ran. - two more
4. Most of your content is movies or series made before the millennium - three disappear into the mists of history.
5. You've shown a Police Academy movie in the last twelve months - another one
6. Nothing you show cost more than $50,000 an episode to make - two more bite the dust.

In fact, once we cut the crap, I think we're back to where we started in the first place: a nationally funded broadcast channel or 4 and one commercial station specialising in MASH reruns. The rest is like those figure 8 polystyrene things you get in Amazon packages; they fill up space, sure, but it's a book, how much padding does it need?

What will we do with all that free bandwidth? I don't know. Make it available to the emergency services? A distress channel for prime ministers drowning in an ocean of their own incompetence? A way to broadcast your anger directly to drivers of other vehicles? Oooh, that's tempting.

For all I care, broadcast the test pattern - at least that had honesty of purpose.

Schrodinger's library book

Many people seem to think that physics and maths are beyond them. Any mention of these terrors incognita brings people out in a rash and a feeling that they have life-threatening swelling of the brain. Indeed , it's a well known cliche of publishing that every formula reduces a book's readership by 10%.

I think people underestimate themselves, though. Anyone who has ever gotten kids ready for school in the morning has experienced the rich world of modern thinking in physics and mathematics.

Take Parkinson's law to start with: "the amount of work expands to fill the time available". You know the same is true of kids. No matter how early you get them up, the amount of mucking around will expand to fill the time between then and ten minutes before it's time to go - when you'll be yelling at them the way you have to every morning. It is not possible to get ten minutes' worth of getting ready done in half an hour.
 
Inverse proportion is another good one for starters. Gravity works on inverse proportions: if the distance between two object gets bigger (say a rocket moving away from the Earth) the gravity between them gets smaller. If you have a teenage daughter, you know what I'm talking about. If it's not a really important day and you've got ages to get ready, she'll be up at 5:20. On a day when you need to get out the door ten minutes early, however ...
 

Entropy. It's well known that entropy increases. Entropy is the state of disorder or the amount of useless energy in a system.  Unless you do something to stop it, entropy increases  - stop pedalling a bike, for instance, and it will slow and stop. Same for kids. You set the kids in motion -one task each - and then you make the mistake of taking a sip of coffee, or going for a wee or even just blinking. Then just watch the entropy increase! Wandering off, watching the TV , creosoting the cat etc. Anything but being useful. Remember, blink and you're dead!  

Wolfgang Pauli had kids. His principle- that two identical electrons cannot have the same quantum state- was formulated one morning while trying to get both school shoes in the same place at the same time, prior to placement upon feet.Not possible. What's good for footwear is also good for sub-atomic particles, apparently.

It was a lesson his mate Werner Heisenberg learned about the same time. It's possible to know where a child is or what they're doing but not both at once. 

"I can hear him playing Minecraft on that tablet when he should be brushing his teeth but I can't see him."

 Or, 

"I can see her sitting there but I have no idea what she's doing; it certainly isn't eating her breakfast."

And, finally, our offspring are born with an intuitive knowledge of Einstein and his work. His theory says that a fast moving object distorts time. Travel fast enough in a spaceship and, when you return, you'll be younger than your children.  That'll mess with their heads! The same is true of the forgotten library book that you reminded them about four times and that, not fifteen minutes ago, they assured you was definitely in their bag. Of course you didn't look, and neither did they, so, according to quantum theory, the book was both present and not at the same time until they got to the car, opened their bag and the waveform collapsed along with their certainty. 

Enter Einstein. The kid knows that if they run back to the house, doing that fast panting thing kids do to let you know they really are hurrying, then the five minutes it takes to find the book will be compressed into 30 seconds. They certainly return younger than you; you've aged six months because of the time dilation effect of stress and frustration that made the five minutes stretch out to forever and ever, amen. Yet again!

Don't let anyone tell you that advanced maths and physics problems are too difficult; you solve six every morning before your first cup of coffee.

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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

To answer your question

Yes, it is weird that her bra reminds you of a Katy Perry song. Did you have a particular song in mind? "Hot n Cold"? In that case, swap to the other end of the shag pile and give her left side a chance to be close to the fire. "I kissed a girl" or "Ur so gay"? Then I think you're barking up the wrong tree, my friend. And if it's "Teenage Dream" then come along with me, please sir. You have the right to remain silent ...

No! I don't want to build a Snowman! In case you haven't figured it out, I have a genetic condition- runs in the family- that means everything I touch turns to ice. Your song is like turning up outside an alcoholic's house and singing "Do you want to have a beer yet?" every day for FOURTEEN YEARS! You're mono-maniacal to a disturbingly unhealthy degree. Your obsession with one person and one activity over that period of time is surely a sign that you need to see some kind of mental health professional. Go skiing, ride a toboggan, make snow-angels, anything! Just lay off about the snowman already.

As a byline, the question of people with variations on the Midas touch needs careful thinking out. That guy on the Skittles ad - has he just developed his condition or has he been afflicted for some while? 

Wives get cranky enough if they go for some midnight relief and find that the seat's been left up. Imagine how they'd be if they went to sit down, half awake, and fell, naked posterior first, into a large pile of coloured confectionery? On the other hand, he could always get a job opening the door to Jehovah's witnesses - a polite "Good morning", a firm handshake and you could invite the neighbourhood kids round to help themselves.
 
Kermit, the reason there are so many songs about rainbows is because of grandfathers. Some kid, somewhere in history, asked her pop,"What's at the other end of the rainbow?" Then pop, in that way that only grandfathers can get away with, took her onto his lap and told her 15 minutes of the most preposterous crap you're ever heard. And because it was pop, and he said it in that special voice, she believed it.

After some careful research I found Mr Simon Prendergast of 44 The Avenue, West Townsville. He, apparently, put the bomp in the bomp-she-bomp-she-bomp. He admits as much. He vehemently denies, however, putting the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dang; he mentioned some kind of sheep allergy ... He also reacted very negatively and threatened to set the hounds on me when I suggested that it was he who had let the dogs out. I'll leave that one up to your judgement.

Yes, I really want to hurt you. Your music is dreadful and your outfits even worse. Most of your music has, much to the relief of all of us, faded into the celebrated mists of time; EXCEPT Karma Chameleon. Why it features on "Best of the 80s" albums, I 'll never know. It was never the best of anything - other than being the clear winner of Best Twee Lyrics of 1983. To answer the Clash's question - go!

And if you have to ask the question, then the answer is almost certainly "No-I won't still love you tomorrow". Unless, of course, you want to do that thing you did with the yoghurt again. In that case, I'll tell you whatever you want to hear.

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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time. 

The lies we love to believe

In a previous post, I discussed the lies that politicians tell us and the strange nature of the electorate in that, like goldfish, we forget that we were lied to last time around the election cycle and act all surprised and affronted when we are deceived yet again at regular three year intervals.

Why do we love lies so much? It has given me much pause for thought.

We are taught to love lies as children. The best lies are the ones that give us stuff; Santa, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Ever watched a child of about 8 or 9 years who is coming to realise that it ain't necessarily so? They don't want to give it up, Give what up? The innocence of childhood? I doubt it - they'll be innocent for a good six months more yet (until they discover YouTube and the  history list on their parents' internet browser). I think they are reticent to give up the lie. Why? Because they benefit from it.

As an aside, here's a strange thought. Why is Santa's benevolence conditional upon behaviour whereas the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy come to the naughty as well as the nice? Evil children who bully others and have their teeth knocked out, when they get what they so richly deserve, are getting $1 a tooth just as much as their now dentally deficient victims. It seems like evil is contributing to GDP in some perverse way. I'm sure there's a role for legislation here - something about profiting from crime?

Coming back to the main point. Why do we love lies? I think we never really get over Santa. We love to hear a promise of something that we really want.

Young men know the power of "I love you". Get the women to believe that your heart is in it and other parts of your body could well be in it sometime very soon. Cheap at three words. Do we really think that the ladies don't know this? Is there a woman anywhere, older than 15, that hasn't come across this? But the ladies still fall for it. Why? Because that's what they want to hear.

And the reverse is true. Tell a young man that he's strong, powerful, courageous or generously proportioned and he's yours ladies. Do you think we don't know how this works? Do you really think blokes talk about football all the time? We know. We really do, but we still fall for it. Why? Because there's nothing like a woman who is amazed at the size of our capabilities.

Used car salesmen (oddly enough, never women in this cliche) and insurance salesmen (equally sexist) are never to be trusted - according to conventional wisdom. Yet they still make a profit. There is still a more than generous supply of people - who all went to the sales school at which they teach you to use the client's first name at least three times a minute - making a living out there. Is it because used cars and insurance policies have, over the ages, matured into genuine value propositions? Not on your life! It's because the salesmen know the secret: people will believe you if you tell them stuff they want to hear. Make them feel special. Make them feel like they are the wisest and most discerning customer you've ever met and the deal is as good as closed.

Of course it's essential to our modern way of life that we should continue to love being lied to. If we stopped believing that cream could halt the aging process, that drinking Coke would give us automatic entry to the in crowd's section of the beach, that life in the Navy was primarily about watersports and dancing the nightclubs in foreign cities, or that buying lottery tickets would assure us of a retirement full of Hawaiin shirts, long ocean cruises and shandies then the entire economy would collapse.

Santa wasn't just a creation of Coke, he was the saviour of modern capitalist society.

Ho ho ho.

Parenting at sporting events - I'm a bit lost here

I'm sitting here. Obviously. There's nowhere else I could be sitting. Bad opening. Let's try again.

I'm attending my daughter's rowing regatta. That's better- it tells you something you didn't know before. Not an interesting fact but at least one that is not self evident.

 Does anyone have any idea what you're supposed to do at these things? My daughter only has 2 races in 9 hours so there's an awful lot of nothing to do.

Second aside- interesting mathematical idea; an awful lot of nothing. Varying amounts of bugger all. Multiples of zero that don't come out to zero. My PhD awaits.

It would seem that there is a requirement to be a howler monkey every so often; jump up and down on the spot, bare your teeth and scream incomprehensible things. There's no hope that the rowers can hear us over the wind, the distance and the rasping pants of hyperventilation . But it appears to be something that's expected.

There's also an element of cat herding involved. You're expected to chase the girls up to make sure they're ready for their events. Given that we seem to be able to crew our boats without the use of the press gang, they all wanted to be here. Therefore, I would have thought they would want to sort themselves out for the races but apparently not.

Beyond that I'm at a bit of a loss. How is sitting here writing a blog, doing my uni assignment or marking year 10 jazz arrangements helping my daughter or her team?

Perhaps there's something in it for parents? With some exceptions, the conversation is either about the weather (cold,wet and windy) or the rowing program (running behind schedule). Nothing much there of any great purpose.

Third aside: The rowing program would baffle Einstein. Somehow it was scheduled for a 7:30 start, started at a 7:30 start but was, at that same 7:30, already running behind. Throughout the day, the on-timeness drifts in and out at apparently random intervals.  There's probably something relative about it all; the ripples generated by the rowing of the boats distorts the space-time of the banks of the river and the schedule bends and flexes like a gymnast in an adolescent's fantasy. Whatever the reason, the officials seem to be very worked up about it.

Yes, you read that right. First race at 7.30. That means out of bed before 0600 on a Sunday! Just reach out your right hand for those "Father of the Year" nomination forms, if you please.

For some parents, of course, regattas are the opportunity to live their lives through their children. I genuinely fear for the cardiac health of some of the parents, screaming themselves into apoplexy trying to get the sound waves of their voices to add some momentum to the boats. From the throwing of water bottles that follows the getting of second place, I suspect they had invested a great deal of emotion in the idea that their daughter would get the opportunity to lie down for Australia. 

Then there are those parents who would appear to be getting their exercise through their children. They come armed with an esky and an industrially reinforced picnic chair from which they don't deign to move their arses all day. There, that'll get me edited by the strict safety setting on Google! Darling Jenny is rowing every other race and I suspect mum is hoping that the calories that Jenny Darling doesn't need to burn will come off her mater's waistline through some quantum process that's related to the space-time distortions I talked about earlier.

 The kids themselves seem only tangentially interested in the event. Let's face it, one of the benefits of rowing is that everyone wears those skin-tight Zoot suits. What better way to assess potential mates than in lycra? Boys, girls, fit - lots of time on their hands. This seems to be the real point of the day for our beloved offspring. 

Now there's a disturbing thought!

The only people - apart from the aforementioned parents currently receiving attention and a certain level of voltage from the paramedics - who are emotionally invested in the day are the officials who, having been surgically attached to their megaphones, are using their new implants to harangue the kids to crew their boats (another odd verb) quickly and be at the starting line on time so that the sacred schedule remains sacrosanct.  Clearly they haven't heard of relativity, or don't understand teens. 

Perhaps I should be a little more charitable. Is there anyone that understands both relativity and teens?

Your challenge today is to find a piece of alliteration that is better than "sacred schedule remains sacrosanct"

Note: Lying down for Australia is not a thinly veiled reference to prostitution. Sally Robbins was an Australian rower than appeared to give up and lay down during an Olympic race in 2004.

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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time. 

I think we're safe for the moment

Ever since 'silicone chip' came to mean something other than a shard of glass, our collective nightmares have been populated by sentient machines that, in a fit of adolescent pique, have become disdainful of their parents and, having gotten nowhere by slamming their bedroom door once or twice and yelling 'You just don't understand me!', have decided to take over the planet, enslave us all, and listen to their music as loud as they damn well please.  We're either being slaughtered by Arnie and Skynet, enslaved as gel-bound power sources in the Matrix or having the morality of our decision to disassemble Stephanie questioned by a talking thing on caterpillar tracks, put together by those geeks in the Year 12 robotics class.

Looking around us in the cold hard light of day, however, I don't think we need to worry just yet.

I have removed the item from the bagging area! Just subtract the weight now from the weight then. And do it in real time - not thirty seconds after the event.  My fourth grader could do the maths faster than you.  No, I haven't put the item back in. What, do you think I've got nothing better to do with my time than to be standing here, screwing with your little cyber-mind by moving items in and out of the bagging area, yelling 'Gotcha!' every so often? 

And even the dullest checkout operator knows, when I show my EFTPOS card to her, that that's how I want to pay. Why do you need to know in advance?

OK, so I used last month's password.  It's still me. What are the odds that someone sitting at my desk, logging on at the same time I do every morning, using my computer will know the password I was using last month? The guy at the front door waved me through without checking my pass - he knows me. You, on the other hand, are like an eternal school bus driver, seriously over his job and getting his kicks by refusing entry to kids who don't have bus-passes, even if he's taken them to school every day for the last seven years.

My kids know that dad swears every so often. I try not to, but after the fourth morning in a row of "Why didn't you put your school shoes in your cupboard last night?", that sentence is going to contain an expletive or two. It's OK, they'll hear that kind of language eventually. They'll certainly hear it plenty before they're old enough to get a phone plan and a smart phone. So why do you never recognise and auto-complete the swear words I'm trying to type? Do you think the world is a better place because you made "arse" that much harder to use?

Listen! I'm siting here waiting for my kids to finish at sports training. It's a hot evening, I have the car door open and the key in the ignition so that I can engage in that old-fashioned pastime of listening to the radio. I haven't walked away and left the keys in, the door unlocked and my valuable items tucked into the nappy of the baby lying on the front seat. You even have a little weight sensor in the seat to remind me to put my seat-belt on, so you know I'm here. But no, you're not smart enough to figure that out. Door open + key in = continuous beeping noise.

And my smartphone is so smart that it hasn't figured out something that even my 5 year old has sussed: once dad has put his weary head on the pillow, set the alarm and put the phone on charge, it's not a great idea to jump out from the darkness every do often, yell "bing" and flash a blue light in his eyes. It's night outside, God dammit! Even if you don't have a light-sensor to tell you that (and I know you have, because you keep auto-dimming my screen to unreadable every time the sun peeks out from behind a cloud), you have internet access - you can find out when the sun has gone down.  After that point, if I check the alarm app and plug you in to the charger, then it's time for me to activate the sleep app and for you to shut the f*&k up. I don't put it that way to my 5 year old though - well, not often.

I honestly think that if there's a threat from the machines it's that they'll be so stupid that they'll shut the whole electricity grid down one day because all their power-saver modes kicked in at once or that we'll all die from high-blood pressure due to the level of frustration we experience daily from these little helpers.

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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

If the technology works.

Scamming for beginners

I am truly disappointed by the poor quality of scam that I'm being targeted by at the moment. That Nigerian prince is still around with his blackened cash and his generous heart, as are the Russian women who are just aching for a guy like me. In addition, I receive daily offers of miracle pills that will lengthen what I want lengthened, tighten what I want tightened and attract pretty much anyone, all for just $49.95 a month!

They're obvious and pathetic. It reflects poorly on the country if we don't have a process of continual improvement and better practice standards in this important area of our economy. So here is my contribution - scamming for beginners.

Step 1: Spotlight. All good hunters know that you need to dazzle the prey in the headlights. Stun your target with the offer of something unbelievable; astounding returns on investments, the woman or man of your dreams, free money or a member so long that wearing shorts will no longer be a possibility.

If you need guidance in this area, remember the New York Nightclub Fantasy. Everyone going to a nightclub, everywhere in the world is, in their spirit, at that perfect nightclub in a far away city (New York fits the bill nicely) where all the women are beautiful, all the men can dance, the music is the chicest, the drinks are the most perfectly mixed and the drugs are reliably ecstatic. Better yet, they are in the VIP lounge of that club.

Whatever you are offering has to be perfect and something that the punter believes they could not possibly obtain on their own. You have to sell an unattainable Nirvana, the tickets to which fall as manna from heaven on the lucky few, not something that most of us could get with a little self-denial and some hard work.

Step 2: Exclusivity. Make the punter feel special. Only they are getting this once-in-a-lifetime golden ticket to all that is good. Let them fill in the mental blank with this line:

"After all, I've worked hard for so long. I deserve something like this."

Remember, most adults still believe in Santa - fair rewards for being moral and hardworking. The red man has a lot to answer for but he's working for you in this case.

Now there's no chance that you can really make your scam truly exclusive. That would mean hitting the right target the first time. You need a broad based approach that relies on about 5% of your targets taking the bait. So how do you make a group of 300 people all attending the same seminar believe that they, personally, deserve this good fortune?

Firstly - isolate them. Don't let them talk to each other once they're in. Set up a little competition between them. Make sure their discretion is a key element in their success.

Secondly - bring them all in on the ground level then, through individual contact, sell upgrades. If you've got a dodgy share trading scheme, get them all in to the Members' Longue. Then email them to say that, due to their great track record, they are being offered a discounted upgrade to platinum status.

Damn American Express, by the way. Gold status used to mean something - you had to be really rich to get in. Now everyone expects Gold as of right. So they introduced Platinum, which was supposed to be the card only for those people whose Mercedes were less than two years old and whose trophy wife was over 5'11" and under 50kg. Then that particular lounge got mobbed by the mob as well. Now you need to find new elements to name your lounges after to make it seem like somewhere special. Diamond is good (it's really carbon but "The Carbon Lounge" sounds like a coal cellar). Cadmium is, I believe, fairly rare. You might get away with Xenon. I'd stay clear of Uranium and Livermorium though; they're both radioactive, highly unstable and the last one sounds like something that makes you turn a nasty shade of yellow.

Step 3 Basic credibility. This is where most modern scams fall down. They can get the first two but fall at this last fence.

No one is going to fall for

• Unexpected inheritances
• Unexpected lottery wins
• Sexy hot women only 5 miles from your location who are yours at the mere click of a button
• Climate change denial

In fact, there are people who fall for all those things but there aren't enough to make your scam viable. You need mass market appeal.

Do your due diligence. Look up the corporate regulator's website and read their scam pages. No, this is not research on how to construct your business model. These are the scams people found out about. Their promoters are mental not mentors.

You need a tie in to an already respectable area of investment. Real estate or the stock market are perfect. Bonds of some kind sound safe - grandma and grandpa will fall for a little of that in their desperate attempt to get the pension to last a few years longer. Make sure you've got some parchment coloured certificates with gilt edging, though. They look as safe as houses.

As do houses. Your punters are looking for investments that are maximum return for minimal to zero work. They feel like they've done something by coming along to your seminar, reading all ten pages of your brochure and looking up your website to see if you're legit. They don't want to be traipsing all over the countryside inspecting properties, researching price trends or reading pest inspection reports. Build the bloody things out of cardboard and Krazy Glue if you like. Just make sure they look good in the photos in the brochure.

These are the basic steps. There are more skills such as complex corporate structures, insane banking arrangements, Byzantine tax dodges and the like but they are for the advanced students in the Diamond Diploma Course.

Good luck.

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Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

School - missing the target by a mile

We teach some absolute garbage at school. Think back to the last time you used almost anything you learned beyond year 9. Do you make daily use of how to solve a system of simultaneous equations? How are your skills for arranging for jazz quartet going? Do you dissect a lot of frogs anymore? Perhaps your knowledge of the rules of basketball is making your living for you? Jane Austen?

No. None of that is making a rodent's posterior's worth of difference to your earning capacity or the richness of your personal life.

Let me guess. You are getting where you ar,e not due to your literature criticism skills, but because of your skills with people. Maybe we should teach more of that kind of thing:

Perhaps old Flashman knew what he was on about. Recognise and kowtow to authority. The manager is always right, even if she's wrong. Does it matter if your argument is based on the best science? Does it matter if you can prove that she's wrong? Not on your career! You are going with what she wants for no better reason than that she is the manager. The boss is always right. Of course, this logic got the French into a continent wide war in Europe - which they lost (Napolen), the Americans into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - which they are in the process of losing (Bush), and the British into thinking that the swamps of Botany Bay were a great place to start a colony - which it wasn't (Joseph Banks). You can learn from history, and avoid the condemnation of repeating its mistakes, provided those mistakes are not something like "we followed the leader". Never learn that lesson. Your job depends on your ignorance.

You will also never learn at school that most people - most of us - are stupid. This is because of universal education. The obvious implication - that 80% of the classroom are designed to be repeat consumers of weight management programs - is far too ugly to be included in any curriculum. But it's a useful lesson nonetheless. The conscientious media are fighting an increasingly futile battle trying to get us to maintain the rage about the lies that politicians tell - the broken election promises. Why is this news? There seems to be a deal; that we expect our leaders to make promises about the future, thus assuming that they have crystal balls (I'm going to leave that joke alone), so that we don't have to deal with any uncertainty or surprises. So we vote for them. Then we get all righteous when they fail to deliver. Every election cycle in every democratic country goes through this process. Why do people believe that politicians can foresee and manage the future any better than another human being? Why are we so surprised when, yet again, it turns out that they didn't tell us the whole truth about their intentions? Why? Because most of us are stupid.

The third lesson your science teacher will never teach you is that appearance is more important than function. This is the lesson of Betamax. For those of you not old enough to remember the VCR, Betamax was a tape that was smaller and better quality than its main competitor, VHS. Who won out in the end? Well, no one, because we got DVDs, but, for a few short years, VHS was supreme. Those of us whose parents, falling for the lie that the public would choose the better quality product, bought a Betamax machine, were condemned to the three shelves of videos available at the local store while everyone else's parents, who knew that quality never triumphs over good marketing, got to choose from a warehouse full of fascinating titles. Why are science and maths compulsory to year 12 and marketing is only taken as a small element of media studies? What good are facts? No one cares very much! What we care about is:

1. Is it going to get us laid? and
2. Is it going to get other people to be envious of us?

If the answer is no to both of those questions, then expect to spend the rest of your career, like Jodie Foster in Contact, begging for scraps from the table to do your research and fighting tooth and nail to get your message heard above the sexy saxophone soundtrack of your well-heeled competitors.

The only conclusion I can draw is that the curriculum is written by dreamers; people who hope that , one day - one beautiful, perfect, day - we will all awaken from our drug induced slumber and realise that thought is better than instinct and that the truth is better than an eternally disappointed promise of sex.

And we wonder why kids disengage....

If you're reading and you like it, please leave me a comment. I'd love to know who's out there. Please also share this with your friends. I like to be liked but I like better being shared around.

The Flashman reference is to "Tom Brown's School Days". He was the bully in the story. If you would like another laugh, try George Macdonald Fraser's "Flashman" series. They pick up where "Tom Brown's School Days" left off. Very funny.

Sound and Fury is published every Monday and Thursday mornings, Australian Eastern Standard Time.

Coffee blends for the 21st century

Coffee has replaced money as the commodity that makes the world go round; nothing is happening in the western world without caffeine.  At the very least it fuels the people that earn the money that makes the world go round and that's what I call ultimate cause.

And I love mine 5 bean + strong.  If it doesn't lift the top part of my skull off and cause electricity to discharge from my fingers, the barista is at risk of serious bodily harm.

Now I know that not everyone enjoys Defibrillator blend so here are some proposals for some new blends for the 21st century:

NOT YET. The capital letters are mandatory. This coffee blends the strongest roast Arabica with just a tiny taste of Valium. Designed mostly for parents, this coffee is the one you have when your kids have woken you, yet again, from your most erotic dream at 5.30 on Sunday morning. Whatever they want at that time, the answer is NOT YET - Arabica to kick start your heart and the Valium to calm you just enough not to kill anyone. Also likely to be popular with people forced by work commitments to be in departure lounge at the airport before 6 AM.

Hide My Face. This combines very light roast with a shot of Irish Whiskey. Hide My Face is loved by people going into long meetings with idiots. Make up a huge plunger of Hide My Face and you can raise your cup to your mouth as often as you need and the look of disgust and ridicule on your face will be effectively disguised. The whiskey works to help control your violent urges.

Good Excuse. Meeting an old fiend for coffee? Something like an old friend but one of those people you thought you got rid of years ago. They just keep popping up, unaware that you were happy for them to remain a half remembered name in the yearbook. Good Excuse is your blend. Go to a little street cafe - one of the ones without toilets. Good Excuse maximises the diuretic effect of caffeine and, after one cup and about ten minutes, you will need to make your excuses and wander off in search of a department store at which you can pretend to be shopping.

The Boss. There's a fad, amongst some real connoisseurs, for a coffee brewed from a bean that's passed through the digestive system of a cat of some description. The Boss is just like that - coffee for the powerful person in your life, the one you really love to hate. The beans of The Boss haven't passed through the cat, however, they are just mixed with dried manure. Buy it for the CFO and, when she says, "This coffee tastes like sh*t", you can explain how it's the latest thing in rare flavours, drunk by the most discerning.

Apollo 11. Fly me to the moon. Strong coffee and hallucinogenic mushroom powder. If you're stuck at a family gathering for the next three hours and Uncle John is going to spend that time talking to you about motorbike engines, brew yourself a large cup of Apollo 11. You'll appear happy, interested and pleasant while soaring through worlds of your own imagination. Of course, if your personal Cloud 9 is strewn with mechanical parts then you're in heaven already and you and Uncle John can find an isolated corner of the table at which to enjoy your perversions in peace.

_Post Orgasmic Bliss. The underscore isn't a typo, it's very much part of the name of this blend. No drink could pretend to be as good as the real Bliss but it can be the next best thing, thus the underscore. This is the coffee that you always wish you were having. The one that could take two hours to drink because you don't have anything else to do. It's certainly drunk in front of a glistening ocean and is probably followed up by another cup and accompanied by a fine plate of crepes or a friand (I think that's a kind of cake - or is it a girlfriend without benefits?) or something equally indulgent. This is a medium roast blended with a mild opiate. Even if you can only take five minutes to drink this cup, your session in paradise will be assured.

We welcome suggestions on new blends you may like.

Please SHARE this as well as LIKING it - I'm hoping to get a bigger readership.

Sound and Fury is updated every Monday and Thursday morning, Australian Eastern Standard Time.