WE’D advise hundreds of Bendigo folk not to go to Abu Dhabi, where Australian Jodi Magi was arrested, searched, manacled, jailed then deported for putting a picture of a car parked across two disabled spots on Facebook.
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The charge was putting “bad words” on social media.
In Bendigo, there have been two entire Facebook sites devoted to photographs of bad parking in Bendigo. “Meanwhile in Bendigo” seems to have gone into hibernation at the end of December, only to be replaced by the subtly named “Bendigo’s Crap Parkers.”
We actually recognised a couple of the line busters, those to whom – to quote Pirates of the Caribbean – lines are just a guide really.
One photo shows a car straddling four parking bays.
Simple logic
Dan wondered why he’d invested for years in his young’un’s education.
They were watching the TV news this week and the story of the day – rightly so – was the astonishing feat of sending a space craft way, way out to Pluto and then sending back highly detailed coloured photographs.
Jim was pondering the issue, remarking that it was amazing any pictures were possible.
“Earth is one Astronomical Unit from the Sun or about 150 million kilometres. Pluto is 40 Astronomical Units away or about six BILLION kilometres.
“There can be hardly any light that far out,” he said. And then proceeded to wax lyrical about the inverse square law of light, so that sunlight on Earth is about 1600 times brighter than the pale pinpoint which reaches Pluto.
Photographing Pluto would have been like trying to film a night footy match by the glow of a cigarette butt.
“Don’t be silly, Dad,” herself replied in a suitably sarky way. “They would’ve used a flash.”
Wrong answer
Ignorance is not always bliss… especially when it’s publicly revealed.
A mate told me about this earlier this week and at first it seemed it had to be made up, but with a very little time on the computer it turned out to be fair dinkum.
On London radio station LBC, presenter James O’Brien asked a quiz contestant: “How many kings of England were called Henry?”
Response: “Err, well, I know there was Henry the Eighth, so… err.. .err… three?”
And on Bristol radio station GWR, the presenter asked: “What happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963?”
Contestant: “I don’t know. I wasn’t watching it then.”
New benchmark
Everything is comparative, especially comparisons.
At DTM’s place at 6.30am on Thursday it was seven degrees.
The hottest it had been in three days!
Growth spurt
The future’s not what it used to be.
We’ve been talking about population growth lately and some people are nervous about Bendigo growing to say 130,000 people in the next decade or two. Well, it could have been worse.
In 1913, then Bendigo Mayor Cr J.H.Curnow was speaking at a public banquet about Bendigo’s population and the then new policy of decentralisation.
The broader Bendigo district then had 42,000 people, 700 less than a decade earlier, and Mayor Curnow remarked that if more industries were shifted out of Melbourne (such as the produce markets), Bendigo and Ballarat could have populations of about 200,000 to 300,000 in a few decades.
This was about two-thirds of the current size of Melbourne.
