Category: Observations

Theories of evolution

For as long as there have been archeologists there has been debate about how fire was first created, however watching Charlotte rubbing and banging things together it all seems pretty obvious to me.
Currently she really just starting to get highly mobile and highly curious, and her scientific repertoire of investigative methods currently contains:
1. Lick it or chew on it
2. Shake it vigorously
3. Drop it
4. Rub it againt something else, or try and smack it and something else together.
This last one provides me with amusing parallels to the scientific process in the game evil genius, where your science minions wander around trying to find things that they can combine to make a new thing out of. Although the depicted process is slightly more involved, it still in essence boils down to smack two things together (and shoot them with your giant laser) and see if they make something new.
So I can completely understand how kids could have rubbed two things together and discovered fire, in every aspect apart from their 7 second attention span…

The David Hospital

I have started work at a hospital where there are five ortho registrars, and four of us are called Dave. The fifth is a Margot, and she is being honourarily (or perhaps insultingly) called Dave or Davina by a number of people.

The Med super and his locum are also called Dave.

They’re bloody everywhere I tell you…

Incredulity

Another thing I have experienced since returning to Brisbane, which I don’t specifically recall experiencing previously, is a disquieting sense of incredulity when I see passenger airliners flying overhead. I small part of the back of my brain has taken to piping up and whispering quietly “You know that what you’re looking at is a couple of tons of aluminium and gadgetry hanging in the air supported by nothing but a bit of gas. Surely it can’t really be doing that can it?”

Now I have a good (rudimentary) understanding of the pressure dynamics that cause a certain curved shape wing to produce an upward lifting force, but I am still experiencing this non-transient disbelief.

One of my bosses suggested that you started to think about things and experience doubt about the details involved more as you got older. Whether this was due to becoming more sceptical as you got older, or just some neurodegenerative condition they didn’t venture an opinion.

Whatever the cause, I really would be happier reverting to my previously certain state.

Timetable constraints

This morning over breakfast I came to a realisation that with my birthday tomorrow I had very little time in which to achieve all those things I had said I was going to do before I was thirty.

Running a marathon, as well as killing me, would probably also preclude me undertaking any of the other tasks…

Getting elected to Parliament could be a little tricky, given the lack of an impending election.

Making my first million would certainly take some effort, especially given the current economic climate, and

Taking over the world (or even just a continent) would require substantial enlargement of my secret lair, and some serious overtime by the guys in the “weather machine” and “giant death ray” divisions. That said, the mind control section reports excellent progress, so perhaps not all is lost. They’ve still got nine hours to get the last glitches ironed out…

Suburbia

Well there’s never a dull day in the burbs.

Last night one of the people who lives a few houses down the street got high on something
(at least that was what looked like had happened), went crazy, and got shot by the police.

I got up when he was running up and down the street yelling at 2am, and called the police.

I pointed them to where he was when they arrived.

Later I went and helped with first aid after he ran down the street and tried to bust into another house brandishing a knife, and got himself shot.

Turns out he’ll probably be ok, with to the best of my knowledge only a broken leg and a few soft tissue injuries to show for being shot three times.

Lessons from this however are:

  • Don’t do drugs. Just don’t.
  • If you are yelling for the police to come and help you, when they do show up you should believe them when they say they are trying to help you.
  • Try not to do anything stupid (like placing yourself in a situation where the police need to shoot you) – This is a variation on the second of the three major principles of my own religion. Ask me about it some time…

Other observations from this include:

  • People don’t appreciate how cool it is to live in a country where at any time of day or night you can call a simple number and have police, ambulance and fire professionals come and help you out. When you think about it it’s a brilliant arrangement. No driving to the police station. No paying bribes or protection money. No one saying, sorry, we don’t have anyone available at the moment. Brilliant.
  • Secondly, it’s also good to live in a country where one of the biggest disincentives for police to shoot people is the mind numbing amount of paperwork you have to fill in afterwards. This goes some way to ensuring that people only get shot as a last resort.
  • Finally, previously I had been pretty heavily opposed to Police having tazers/stun guns/etc, however this did illustrate that they may have their place, given that this situation may have been able to have been resolved with less injury if a tazer had been available.

Reminiscent

I’ve been watching the news and finding a disconcerting sense of deja vu associated with the current situation in Georgia (the Georgia in Europe, not the Georgia in the southern USA as reportedly mistaken by some Americans).

The current situation seems eerily similar to the plot of the first game in the Ghost Recon series: A resurgent Russia decides to start flexing it’s muscles and expanding into previously lost territory and begins by covertly backing and later openly moving in to support separatist forces in the Georgian provence of South Osettia.

The game goes on to have Russia try to invade western Europe. Hope the real life version doesn’t go that way.

Log of amusements

On thursday and friday I was at a conference, and it was attended by quite a number of Queensland Health Big Wigs.

Now following afternoon tea they got a couple of people in to lead us through some Tai Chi.

Needless to say a hundred and something mainly middle age white folk (because there were quite a high proportion of women as well as men) stumbling their way through a directed group relaxation session is a highly amusing sight to behold, and it’s also amusing how many people will do something because everyone else is doing it..

Health and Safety Notice

The other day when we were flying home on Virgin the Air Hostess who was making all the safety announcements added a few rather amusing additions in:

“There are smoke alarms fitted in all the toilets, and it is a feral, I mean federal offense to smoke on this flight”

and later:

“The is no smoking on the tarmac, within the terminal building, or anywhere in Queensland”

… If only it were true.

Equality

One of the odd little traditions at the Cairns Base hospital is an annual event called “Boys Lunch”, which essentially involves the male doctors taking an afternoon off and having a few drinks (which if you know anything about medical types usually equals “getting totally rotten”) and watching a few strippers (although I have heard less flattering descriptions of them bandied about by those who have attended previous lunches).

Now luckily this year’s boys lunch coincides with  me being working a week of nights, so I didn’t have to make up some other excuse as to why I didn’t want to go (because I don’t think the organisers would understand that I find the idea of getting trashed with the boys on a weekday generally unappealing, and the idea of watching strippers in the company of my work mates just plain disturbing). The fact that I’m on nights also means however that I won’t been able to organise an alternative event entitled something like “The lunch for people who would like to sip Gin and Tonics at the Marina Bar” for those other like minded boys and girls who’d like a few nice drinks, some good food, without strippers and in a classy establishment.

The bit that’s funny is that a few weeks later there is a reciprocal “Girls’ Lunch” which also involves drinking and strippers (or “Man whores” as I’ve heard them described in conversations), but which is made out to to be somehow classier then the Boys lunch.

The funny observation that Simone made last night was that it was an amusing feature of modern equality of the sexes that the women tried to attain equality by lowering themselves to the men’s level. Needless to say she won’t be rushing out to oogle strippers in two weeks, although I may not have to twist her arm too far to come out for a chocolate martini instead…