The Most Popular Car Park in Japan

Give me a minute to get to the point.

A few days ago, while researching limb ratio of gibbons, I came across an interesting website.

As I’m sure you all know, the maps of the world that we are used to seeing are created using the Mercator Projection. This gives us nice, rectangular maps that can be folded neatly and used for origami in our spare time. Unfortunately it also gives a distorted view of the relative size of various places.

What Happened Next

The last four months have been entertaining and instructive. The Bullfrog has been entertaining and The Chikenz has been instructive.

When my erstwhile employer took it upon themselves to advise me that my services were no longer economic, The Chikenz first reaction was “Thank God for that.”

Her second reaction was “Now you have to do some housework.”

What Happened

It’s been nearly 3 years since my last blog post and about 5 years since I posted regularly. In that time there have been thousands of emails, letters and packages all on the same theme. What happened to the blog?

Senator Assange? - Constitutional Critique

Anne Twomey, a constitutional law expert at Sydney Uni, has an interesting analysis of Assange's bid for the Senate and how that might work given that he is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Interesting to know that he wouldn't be the first person elected to the Australian Parliament in absentia.

Senator Assange? - Constitutional Critique:

'via Blog this'

An Announcement

An Announcement...

Songs

I was trying to remember the name of a song I liked this morning. It's by the Crash Test Dummies and the chorus is just "mmmm mmmm mmmm". Anyway, turns out the name of the song is "mmm mmm mmm mmm". So there you go.

Anyway, I was rather miffed to find it on this list. I do love the comment against "Barbie Girl" though.

The world has gone completely mad.

Is this really what or elected leaders spend their time on?

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/poteoa1997455/s146e.html

Sugamo and Red Underpants

I've added here a few photos that I've taken recently. Mainly these were taken in a place called Sugamo, a small suburb in northern Tokyo most famous for its Shotengai (shopping strip).

As in Australia, local street shopping strips have been slowly disappearing in Japan and are being replaced by large shopping centres. Sugamo has tried to combat this by creating its own character (a duck called Sugamon) and by promoting its monopoly on the sale of lucky red underpants. The fourth photo down shows the shopfront.

I no longer try to explain things in Japan. I just report them.

How Regulation Helped Cause the Housing Crisis (John A. Allison)

"Would I rather eliminate taxes or eliminate regulation? That's a no brainer: regulation"

Interesting insight into the GFC and the Sub-prime crisis and all the nonsense that went along with that.

A response from Star Alliance

They replied today! After nearly two weeks, they have put together the following;

==========
Hello,

We would like to inform you, however, that Star Alliance is a network of 27 individual airlines.

Thank you for your feedback.We will forwarded your feedback to our department.

Thank you once again for your time.

Regards,
Star Alliance Help Desk
STAR ALLIANCE
THE WAY THE EARTH CONNECTS
www.staralliance.com