Dumbed Down

GPS units are taking over from street directories. So much so that street directory manufacturers are losing sales and may in fact shut up shop.

I hope this doesn’t result in the creation of a dumber generation that is ever reliant on technology. Technology has a knack of failing enough to require a back up

Map reading is an important skill and everyone should have knowledge of it and not be so reliant on a GPS. People seem very willing to have no idea where to go and blindly follow where the GPS is taking them.

I have enjoyed the benefits of having a GPS but they aren’t the be all and end all. Nothing beats having local knowledge and seeing the general layout of a journey.

A GPS doesn’t always take you the best way, and you don’t realise you’re not going the best way until you are at your destination, or until you check your journey in a street directory.

Society’s Failure

If the media is to be believed then we have too few police. But would they ever flip the argument and suggest that we have too many idiots that require police intervention?

If it weren’t for sin then we wouldn’t even need police at all.

It’s the immense failure of society that leads to situations like the recent Melbourne riots. Police attended and were massively outnumbered and felt vulnerable. They had to deal with the wilful and malicious damage and looting of private property. All that over the cancellation of a drag racing event.

There seems to be a growing uncivilised element to the population. They aren’t able to think rationally anymore and show scant regard for the results of their actions.

Conflicted

It was put to me recently that there was no way I could call myself a Sydney Swans fan, as I have done for 17 years, while giving any form of support to the new GWS franchise preparing to join the AFL in 2011.

I have proclaimed that I am a Swans fan for life after a childhood of changing teams on a whim as a rugby league fan.

With GWS one has to look at the bigger picture and put parochialism to one side. Ask what is best for the game. If GWS doesn’t get enough members it will be embarrassing for all fans in this region, and I don’t want the doomsayers to be right. So I will be buying a membership and attending a few games. I might stop short of buying merchandise even though I love ‘the merch’.

I will be doing all this because I enjoy Australian Rules football first and foremost. My support of the Swans comes after this. I have played, coached, umpired since I was 10. It’s officially my sport, there is no other for me.

I understand there would be some conflicts in the hearts of fellow Swans supporters, especially in this region. I believe it is more important for the game to put aside parochialism for a little while and buy a membership of GWS when they come up for sale. In the meantime ‘Sign up for Sheedy’.

Bill Cosby Books

“Love and Marriage”

and

“Fatherhood”

I have watched a lot of ‘The Cosby Show’ and listened to most of Bill Cosby’s comedy albums as I grew up. So good was he that frequently a Cosby reference would be thrown into conversation at the Haynes dinner table.

At the height of Bill Cosby’s appeal during the years of ‘The Cosby Show’ he wrote these two books and some others that we don’t have. They mostly reflect his stand up comedy so must have been relatively easy to write.

For me they were easy books to read as I could imagine Bill Cosby’s voice as I read. That way I was always captivated and was on the same wavelength as him. I could pick up the tone in which he would say the words. Therefore there would be no rereading of pages.

It really makes for entertaining reading and perhaps when I am closer to marriage and fatherhood I may even read them again. They would be better than any instructional book anywhere.

Jerilderie Letter

‘The Jerilderie Letter’ by Ned Kelly

These are words direct from the mouth of the infamous bushranger. Very brazen and even funny at times. Kelly had shot many policemen by this time, merely out of self-defence if you believe his story. As if to say how dare they come and try to arrest me for “allegedly” stealing someone else’s horses.

He hated police with a passion, and it shows. His words were merely a curtain raiser to what happened in the famous siege at Glenrowan in country Victoria. Where he emerged in his homemade armour yet was ultimately arrested and hanged in Old Melbourne Gaol.

An interesting and short read, if you can get over his lack of punctuation and occasional lack of correct grammar.