Legislate lifestyle?

Just a short ranty post while watching q and a. They had bill shorten on and honestly as much as I have come to despise labour and Kevin rudd I really respect bill after seeing him a few times now on qanda. He really strives to answer the questions put to him and answers in a way that says he believes in what he is doing and less about scoring political points. Tony Abbott was on and really seemed that every statement he made contained a cheap shot at current government. Bill never seemed to rise to the bait and gave answers not excuses or political jargon.


But really interesting discussion at the end about how Kevin rudd was voted in on his mandate on climate change. Yet after Kyoto, very little leadership. One of the other panel members said that after the world found out the ozone was dying, we all stopped using CFC's very quickly! The ozone layer is now actually healing. But the apathy of Australian toward climate change means no one is willing to give up their lifestyle to address climate change.

The guy then mentioned that when Sydney was running out of water, the government set legislation overnight that people could only use water on alternate days. Apparently there was outcry it would destroy their lifestyles, but it turns out everyone adjusted. In fact when dams recovered and they wanted to remove restrictions there was another huge outcry - to keep the legislation in place!

So then they asked, where climate change is such an important issue, indeed it is Kevin Rudd's mandate, why no legislation? Bill shorten said they don't want to legislate what people do to tackle this issue, and instead working towards thing like the ETS.

So this is after I read this earlier:

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/venues-brand-2am-lockout-a-return-to-joh-era-20091027-hino.html

Another stupid piece of Legislation put forward to restrict people's lifestyle! The argument is to reduce violence, but honestly where are the stats and how many people are affected by this? Another annoying thing where the bulk of voting public aren't out at all hours and traditionally dislike those that do (the media does not paint a good picture) so they score points by clamping down on their lifestyles.

But climate change? Where scientists all tell us how much this will put out actual scores of people both in the immediate future as well as future generations. Oh no can't legislate a change there. Might be more effective in keeping people safe and healthy than restricting young people who want to go out, but you might upset too many voters.


Grrrrrr...


-- Posted from my iPhone

Alcohol Myopia

So you're out on the town having a few drinks. Having a great time with your friends and suddenly someone starts talking about how much fun, say, a game of golf would be some time, and next thing you know you're all excitedly making plans for a game the next morning!

Come the next morning... and nursing a hangover and lack of sleep, everyone suddenly realises that game of golf is just not going to happen.

This is just a single example of a a much wider phenomenon, and there was a very cool wired article about this a few weeks back: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/vodkagoals/

The cool thing to notice is the graph. For non drinks, the expectation of succeeding at a goal is proportional to their committment to that goal. For drinkers, you would expect that gradient to alter to a degree, but it turns out it absolutely flatlines! Someone experiencing the effects of alcohol feels the same degree of commitment in going to the shops next week as they do in going to the moon!

So while this may seem like a bad thing, I think this is definitely one of the things that makes alcohol such a great social lubricant (good thing). Some of the really great conversations you have with people at the pub are the passionate conversations people have about niche interests, goals and dreams. We all have a huge list of things we think would be great to do, but realise aren't likely or aren't easily obtainable, so have little committment on our part. As such, we probably wouldn't talk about it normally as we wouldn't want to be held accountable or show our lack of commitment to something we admit we would like to do.

But now in the pub, someone mentions something that overlaps with your vast array of things you would be interested in, and possibly others as well, and now you are all engaged in an authentically passionate conversation about it. Your normal reservations discussing something you know so little about, or your perceived waste of time in hearing information about something you will never do are stripped away.

So sure, you converse with people all night about stuff that bears little fruit as you would demand from a normal conversaion, but the shear wealth of conversation it generates, getting us to expose our normally reserved dreams and goals in life, really allows those gems that come up. The great conversations you remember, the others forgotten.

A boon to justify that tipple at the pub :)

Storage/Delivery service for a night out

So went out drinking last night and came up with those amazing ideas you have when drinking.  I'm sure I had a lot more than I can remember, but figured those I can remember should be written down for future generations to appreciate.

So because we decided to go into town, ended up leaving my bag and some alcohol we had behind at mates place.  Now sitting here this morning realising that I now need to go back and get my stuff.  What could make this easier?  Let's examine:

Night after drinking, feel a little bleh, not keen on riding on trains to reclaim 'luggage'

The reason it's there is that I couldn't feasibly take it out last night.  Once seperated, very difficult to get it back.

So I thought, wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of extra baggage service offered.  Some 24 service running that would act as storage/delivery.  So I go to the valley, and I put all my stuff in a box that I get the key/combination for, similar to safety deposit box i guess.

So now the next day is here, I call the service, and they have scheduled drop offs to a location of my choosing.  Pay a CC fee up front to get them to bring it out to you (in addition to storage fee) and you open box and sign out contents, give them back box.  If you are some dodgy who manages to call for someone else's box, you won't be able to open it and you have payed for their trouble up front.  So we have sort of a delivery service like UPS, you sign out your stuff.

Now because Sunday morning would involve a large number of deliveries, they could bulk dispatch.  They would have cheaper deliveries, maybe once a day, but you could pay extra if you desperately needed something now.  The idea is it would be cheaper than a cab fare and less bother than public transport and more legal than trying to drive somewhere while still under the influence.  The deliveries would be in daylight hours as well, so would be a normal hours kind of service, safer and cheaper.

As a bonus they could bring you some breakfast... i'm craving it right now.