buggery.org

We are now a three labrador household:

Brent arrived home last night with a puppy. This came as something of a surprise, so as you can imagine I was somewhat taken aback by this. We’ve been talking about completing our labrador collection for some time, but we had agreed to hold off until we got our house.

Oh, and we got our house.

A few days ago I posted our power audit, a first step towards our planned move to living off the grid with solar power. The result of that was that I came up with a total power requirement of 2412 watt-hours per day to meet our basic needs, and compared that with the rated power capacity of our solar panels, which I guessed at 2400. So far so good.

In the days since I’ve done a bit of reading and I feel like I’m starting to get an understanding of this solar power thingy. Yesterday, with the help of the ATA’s very handy booklet, Solar electricity, I did some more sums.

These won’t be of much interest to most people, but I got some good feedback from the last post so I’ll share them below the fold.

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Just a couple of days ago I was bragging to my friend Kirsty about my flawless medication adherence: “I don’t miss doses – it’s been years since I missed a dose,” I said.

Well, I woke up this morning and there on my bedside table are last night’s pills, unswallowed and ignored. It’s the ABC’s fault – I was so furious at the Swindle that I just forgot.

For the unschooled, missing doses of your HIV medications increases the risk of developing resistance to them – ideally you should take at least 95% of scheduled doses to ensure your treatments continue to work. Missing this one won’t take me below that threshold, so it’s very unlikely to have any significant negative effect, but it does spoil my perfect record.

There is a solution, of course: I can take the missed dose now, as my next dose isn’t scheduled until bedtime tonight. It’s the responsible thing to do, and it’ll restore my unblemished record (sort of), but if I do I’ll have to deal with the neurological side effects – essentially it feels like being stoned, but not in a good way.

If I start posting utter gibberish in the next hour or two I guess you’ll know why.

I just witnessed the low-point of 75 years of ABC broadcastling. The Great Global Warming Swindle is, quite simply, the greatest load of unsupported, meretricious, and unsupportable garbage that has ever been aired by our national broadcaster in its 75 years on air.

I’ve spent a bit of time tonight on the phone with the ABC, initially to complain about their decision to broadcast this trash, and subsequently to complain about the ABC’s complaint-handling procedure (call the ABC tonight and mention the word “climate” or “global warming” and you’ll understand what I mean – ask to speak to the head of ‘factual” broadcasting if you want more than a black hole).

I really feel like this broadcast is a milestone (or millstone) for the ABC. It seems the ABC was forced into broadcasting this film. No doubt the ABC Board (Widshuttle, Albrechtsen, and the rest of the Liberal stooges) had their influence. But I’m saddened that, in the face of such blatant political interference, the mandarins at the ABC didn’t have greater resistance. It’s yet another sign of the descent of this country into hell.

Two questions that need to be answered:

1. Whose decision was it to broadcast this program?
2. What was the fee paid by the ABC for the rights to broadcast this program?

While we’re at it, we might as well ask:

1. What processes were employed by the ABC to decide to expend those dollars on this program? Given the controversial nature of the subject matter, how was the ABC’s charter of independence applied?

A caller to ABC local radio this morning is telling a peculiar story about her experience at the Live Earth concert in Sydney. Jane Simmonds says she was at the concert venue for about eight hours and that sitting near her were two men who spent the entire day taking close-up photographs of people attending the concert. She reckons the guys were obviously not interested in the concert itself but only in taking hundreds of photos of concert-goers.

In the old days we used to play “spot the ASIO photographer” at demos and marches, but surely that kind of stuff doesn’t go on anymore. Most peculiar.

Cartoon by Steve Bell from The [London] Guardian, 6 July.

I’m using the fact that this occurred in my old home town as justification for posting this picture:

According to the SMH:

After a quick announcement and a stroll across the dam wall, Mr Howard was at the Bega RSL for a community morning tea, mingling on the floor. That was when Josh Brown, 23, struck. He emerged from the gents wearing Speedos and a ski mask, with “climate change” written on his torso and “ski team” on his back, yelling: “What are you going to do about global warming, there’s no snow, there’s no snow”. Security quickly hustled him away. Brown, from Tathra, was later charged with assault and bailed to appear in Bega Local Court on July 24. Police alleged he had pushed a plain-clothes officer in the chest.

The Bega RSL was the first place I ever went up to the bar and asked for a beer (underage and unschooled in such matters, I asked for a “schooner of KB” – the barman explained that KB only came in cans, and poured me a New). It’s also the home of the “Ted Kidd Memorial Indoor Sports Championship Board” – the only memento of my father’s life apart from his tombstone, a large slab of polished timber which records the winner of the club championships for indoor bowls, snooker and darts, most of which, I am proud to say, were my father).

But I digress – back to the hunk in the speedos…

According to Ms Fits:

Sweet baby Jesus. When did having a political conscience suddenly get so hot?

Couldn’t agree more. Josh, if you need help with your legal expenses, get in touch.

• Man keeps severed hand in fridge
  The South Australian Ambulance Service says a man cut his hand off with a chainsaw, put it in the fridge, and waited for two hours before calling emergency services. (What was he doing for two hours that was more important than calling an ambulance?)
  (tags: chainsaw accidents south-australia)

In a few weeks time (assuming the bank okays our purchase), we’ll be moving to our new home. We really excited about the move and about the changes it will bring to our lifestyle.

One of the big challenges is going to be being off the electricity grid – all of our electrical power needs to be produced on-site, either from the solar panel installation or from a diesel generator. Obviously we don’t want the generator chugging away day and night, so we are preparing to make some pretty significant adjustments in our way of life to accommodate the reduced availability of electric power.

Eventually I expect we will get the power on – as much as the solar lifestyle appeals, I’d just as soon buy 100% certified green power rather than continuing to struggle with less than I’d like. But it will cost several tens of thousands of dollars and some months to get the mains connected, so we will have a period of making do with what we have in any case.

To that end, I’ve drawn up a list of all our electrical appliances and a strategy to keep what we need and get rid of what we don’t, and I thought I’d share it here. It looks like we can manage – just – but I dare say I’ve been optimistic in estimating the amount of power we’ll have available (especially in the winter when the hours and intensity of sunshine are lower).

This will be an ongoing issue in our lives but we are determined to make it work, so this is a first step towards that.
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