I spotted this in the Oz today, just before beetling off to the grindstone.

  We've all read the Dilbert cartoons in the papers. An American magazine recently ran a 'Dilbert Quotes' contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert type managers. These were voted the top ten quotes in corporate America:

On Monday just gone, science remembered the centenary of of the largest impact on land of an object from space. Known today as the Tunguska Event, there remains no conclusive answer to the question of just what did enter the planet's atmosphere over the Siberian tundra to annihilate at high altitude with more energy released than 150 Hiroshima bombs.

The area of Siberia where the detonation took place is desolate. Frozen ground in winter, sodden swamp in summer. Expeditions into the region take place almost every year now, yet little of viable scientific evidence pointing to exactly what occurred has surfaced. From an out-of-control alien spacecraft to a geophysical event, the explanations remain rife. Some say asteroid, some claim a comet core. The most frustrating part of the research into the event must surely be the complete lack of evidence of just what did enter and vaporise. No impact crater, no believable remains, no molten extra-terrestrial rock. Only the recorded written memories of those who witnessed the event and felt it's consequences.

Flattened trees radiating out for hundreds of square kilometres from the epicentre are still seen today lying in the morass and hilliny forested terrain, evidence of the power of the occasion. At ground zero, tree trunks bereft of all branches still stand upright, charred and dead, indicative of the air burst immediately overhead. The only real measure human science has for the event is the atomic aftermath at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Apparently these Earth-meets-space events - if indeed Tunguska was a space object meeting - occur around once every 300 years, according to recorded history. Amusingly, recorded history in the grand scheme of our planet's history is so damn short on an astronomical time scale as to be irrelevant.

In the modern age, we'll be well informed of the next event, and there will be a next event, of that we can be certain. Courtesy of the NASA Near Earth Object research program, supposedly our current astronomical science will be able to tell us well in advance of any approaching armageddon. Well ... maybe. All I've ever seen in the news are the near misses. After the fact. Better to live in ignorance and die in a flash, I reckon.

July 4, 2008. It's a day, just like any other day. Well, not any other day, because today it's a Friday which makes it a better than average day. End of the working week and harbinger of the weekend. Yay!

Our premier motorsport category is on the verge of massive change.

As usually happens in Darwin, the racing was as hot as the ambient temperature. Surprisingly free of major stupidity though, which is refreshing. Save for Paul Morris, that is. Despite being told to lift his act by officials during the driver's briefing on Friday, Morris still managed to punt a couple of drivers from what the television cameras showed.

Actually, the title is a little misleading, because I understand what the government's proposed ETS is, but I am in the dark - as are all Australians at this point - as to just how it will end up working.

I like the following from the Fair Pay Commission's Chairman, Professor Ian Harper.

“Wages paid to the 1.3 million Australians who rely directly on the Commission’s decision comprise only a small percentage of the economy’s total wage bill. Furthermore, the impact on employment and unemployment will be relatively minor in the context of current economic circumstances.”

Okay, I'll admit to having nothing much to write about today. Politics is boring. Climate change is far too vague at present to make any worthwhile comment about, and besides, I haven't finished reading the Garnaut Report yet. In desperation, I opened the Daily Telegraph - you know the one - and blow me down if the word 'dump' didn't leap off the screen at me.

Pammy dumps on Tommy; Jana gets dumped by the AOC; Morris thinks Labor want to dump him; a Parramatta thugby fan get's dumped and David Gallop dumps on Russell Crowe. Then there's Michael Hagan and Jason Taylor dumping on each other, an unknown Australian tourista - doubtless drunk, stoned or otherwise off his face - dumped on by a Pamplona bull with the page rounded off by Tim Ross dumping on Kyle Sandilands and an anonymous two-tonne lump of concrete doing some dumping of its own.

If you really wanted to get into the dumping mode, you could even drag in "Our Nic's" dad dumping on the secret behind her kid's name. But I couldn't give a shit, so I didn't.

Radio National Breakfast has a segment between 7:30am and 8:00am where politican editor for the Melbourne Age makes comment on isues of the moment. The intro to this mornings five minute segemnt was something like " another day and another position within the coalition onthe proposed Emissions Trading Scheme". Then comment on the coalition's achilles heel openly identifying what everyone must surely know by now.

For those of you who missed Q and A tonight, you missed a very public showing of a Murdoch columnist making a complete goose of himself. Of course, I'm speaking of Andrew Bolt. A more ignorant, rude and abrasive human being in a public exhibition I've not seen on national television for many a year. Even Helen Coonan barred up, telling Bolt to pull his head in.

According to Bolt, in response to a climate change question on the melting of Arctic ice, he made the ludicruous and out of context claim that Antarctic ice was actually increasing. Ergo, no problem? Is this man a completely vacant brained ignoramus, or does he simply clutch at straws in a bid to keep his personal denial 'crusade' alive? Should the human species blithely sacrifice numerous arctic species on the off chance that just maybe Bolta's baseless claims are right? I can hear future generations asking now....."what's a Polar Bear?"

On questions about the Dennis Ferguson pedophile vigilantism issue, Bolta's response was to lock 'em up! Mind you, that wasn't the context of the question. On a question regarding the parlous state of Liberal party leadership and unity, Bolta proceeds to tell us all that he doesn't know just what Rudd stands for, then goes on to extol the virtues of John Howard, when he - Bolta - was the leader of the pack telling Howard to go when the polling was on the wall in October 2007.

My question for the panel would have to be, what does Andrew Bolt stand for?

I've been somewhat amused by the on again-off again Liberal / National merger drama, especially so since former Indigenous Affairs Minister in the Howard government, Mal Brough,  came on the scene.

Today is the 92nd birthday of Edward Gough Whitlam.

The mob I work for at the moment isn't really up the pointy end of marketing and promotion in the age of high technology. The people I work with, amazingly, have no concept of the blogosphere. Rather, they didn't, until I showed them today.

I don't really blame QANTAS for attempting to garner every consumer dollar they can. QANTAS is a business. A consumer-oriented business. Consumers smoke, drink, wear scent, read books, wear jewellery, so why shouldn't a consumer-oriented business make those items available as a part of it's offerings? So what if QANTAS provides cigarettes on the duty free trolley?

Mind you, if I wanted to buy cigarettes duty free, I dare say I'd do so at a duty free outlet, not on board an aircraft. It is a little bemusing also that QANTAS should want to carry cigarettes, and undoubtedly a plethora of other duty free products, on board an aircraft which operates to strict weight and balance parameters. One would think that every kilo of esoteric, and some might say, non-essential weight which isn't paying its way, is actually a cost penalty to the airline, not a profit generator. Do I smell the stink of desperation?

It is ironic that governmental advisory reports on climate change are produced on paper, the production of which in and of itself consumes huge amounts of bleached dead trees. Surely the carbon minimised footprint is well in the red before any mitigation of carbon production actually begins.

Twelve months ago today, I wrote this post as an attention-getter, in a bid to have the author of the example nuisance email pay attention to my requests, which have since become complaints, to have my email address removed from his mindless mailing lists. To the best of my knowledge, he still has not removed said email address, given that he continues to haunt my mail client. Some people just don't know when to quit.

It's a simple exercise, when using content management software, to discover the IP address and root source of commenters. The numerous derogatory, insulting comments on the above post from persons purporting to be Joshua D, not concerned, overly concerned and extremely concerned all originate from the same IP address, generated by Telstra Bigpond via a server in Western Australia. It's clear to me that these commenters are the same antagonist who refuses to cease stalking my inbox. It transpires that Robert McJannett has vacated the Sunshine State for the boom state of Western Australia. Doubtless he's pestering the Carpenter government these days about monorails being the safest form of transport on the planet. Another Labor government, and doubtless another bitter disappointment for the monorail cause. How do I know this? Various sources, including the registered mail he took the time and money to send, in a bid to bully me into removing the aforementioned post from my blog. Something I have absolutely no intention of ever doing, I have to say. That's MY blog, Robert, not my wife's blog. I own and pay for the domain, she simply registered it for me and has long since changed the registration to my name. I don't like bullies, and I don't take prisoners. Neither do I intentionally defame people. Something poor Robert insists has happened because his name appears in print. News Flash, Robert!! Your name isn't copyright, and you certainly haven't been defamed. Made to look a complete goose, more likely, but certainly not defamed.

McJannett has been threatening litigation for months now, yet I've not been visited by a process server, nor do I expect to be. He's also called our telephone number in the middle of the night in a bid to insult, abuse and otherwise harass either my wife or myself ... whoever happened to answer the phone, I suppose. He has called and caught my wife unawares on one occasion, abusing her needlessly, given his beef appears to be with me. Something which we both found quite revealing, from someone who claims to know the law. McJannett, you see, is a poor man's Timmy Blair. All of the vitriol, but none of the wit, snide or otherwise. He's not at all cognisant of how the internet works, nor the blog world. He clearly doesn't understand the law, or even common decency. He is an ideologue. A hard right-wing conservative sympathiser, labor-hater ... call it what you will. One need only google the man's name to discover that he's ruffled more than his share of feathers, and supports some of the more radical causes around. He and Piers Akerman are well suited, in that both still believe the Heiner Inquiry has something to cough up. The 'sphere is populated with such types. Like the men in Tennyson's 'The Brook', they come and go.

So, thanks for the thoughts and the expense of using registered mail, Robert! Thanks also for the evidence. Stalking is still an offence, as far as I'm aware. Even if it is by long distance snail-mail. All donations gratefully received.

I received the email over the fold this evening, and thought it best to publicise it for the benefit of anyone out there in desperate job straits. I know I've been there.

There are rumblings running through the circus at the moment about parity.

It's been a while since I drew attention to the latest in news from the V8 Supercar paddock, so given yesterday's race was such a boon to Ford fans, I thought it best to tell you that the sport's administrators consider the 'Red-v-Blue' rivalry to be all but dead.

I'm on Federal Labor's E-list

These surely are desperate times. Malcolm Turnbull trying desperately to draw a link between the alcopops tax and a rise in inflation by 0.3% for the quarter ended June 2008. That's despite the fact that while the alcopops tax may well be regulation based, the legislation hasn't passed 'go' yet. Never the less, it seems scads of binge-drinking teenie-boppers are splurging the money they don't have on bottles of spirits as opposed to bottles of lollie-water. Malcolm is completely certain of it. Despite not being able to produce any categorical evidence. Yes, a definite flow-on impact which is costing us all dearly!

He goes on to claim ...

"How can you be fighting inflation when you're putting up the price of alcohol, putting up the price of health insurance, putting up the price of motor cars?"

Desperate straits, for sure and certain. Still, I don't recall the price of alcohol going up across the board, health insurance premiums increasing, or rampant rises in the price of cars? Am I missing something? Is the alcopops tax causing these destructive CPI impacts? Bloody teeny binge drinkers!!!

Meanwhile in other news, no economist interviewed by any player in the mainstream media has expressed any fears of the Reserve Bank taking drastic action - like raising interest rates further. It's okay people! Nothing to see here. Just a crazy man trying to get some attention. Move along! Move along!

Oh .... before I forget. Word in the marketplace is that the NAB are about to announce a home loan product launch sans early repayment penalties. Very big move for one of the four pillars not known for being a leader. I wonder if there's any connection between this snippet, last week's across-the-board rise in rates from the Big Four of between 0.15% and 0.20%, and a fall in the 90 day bank bill swap rate over the past quarter of nine basis points? Oh, and there's the House Standing Committee inquiry into competition in the banking and non-banking sectors, which closed to submissions 11 July. I reckon I can draw a better parallel between the NAB's 'new' product, last weeks rate rises and the Parliamentary inquiry than Turnbull can to alcopops and inflation.

Mal Brough now claims he doesn't want the Presidency of a merged conservative political party in Queensland, despite previously claiming that he did. He denies planning to undermine the merger between Nats and Libs in Queensland, despite calling a meeting of senior party members at Trinity Lane this evening to further discuss this weekends planned joint party convention and formalising of the merger proposal this coming Sunday. It appears Brough is promoting the view of the Federal party, despite the Federal arm of the party having already stated that what Queensland does is up to Queensland.

High drama at it's very Queensland best, to be sure. So much for Brough leaving the political limelight after his resounding defeat in his Federal seat last November. It's crystal clear that Brough has no intention of becoming an also-ran. He knows very well that claiming to not want the merged party Presidency leaves the Liberal side with an unwanted, unsavoury option in former president, Gary Spence, which means unless another Liberal option exists, the Presidency is likely to go to Nationals President, Bruce McIver. But ... Federal Liberal Party President Alan Stockdale has made it known that the Federal party wants a Liberal to head the newly merged entity. I find this 'demand' startlingly arrogant, not to mention out of place, given the Liberal side of the Queensland coalition is outnumbered 17 to 8 in the Queensland Parliament. Party membership numbers aside, it's the political front which surely holds the numbers and the political front which represents the party to the people. Voters don't give a cubic root about who's who in the backroom zoo. Members might, but members don't elect governments.

Mal Brough is clearly out to disrupt the creation of a viable non-Labor political option, on the grounds of personal ambition which looks as though it's still rooted in the Federal sphere. He's certainly holding the Federal party flag high.

It is to be hoped that as Lawrence Springborg believes, the merger process has too much momentum to be stymied at the eleventh hour. We'll know after Sunday.

300-odd people are now safely on the ground after a hair-raising ride between Hong Kong and Manilla.

My feelings about today's announcement by Starbucks Coffee Company, are mixed.