Tony’s posted some terrific pictures of buildings with old signs recently.

Here’s one I really like, in Collins Street, near where I work. Look above the rather tackily-named House Of Cashmere, and you’ll see Newspaper House, and a terrific mosaic.

The saying is from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and was popular in the days when international submarine cables were being developed to bring news and events near-instantly to the far-flung reaches of the world. Perhaps it reflects the original purpose of the building, built in 1933.

There are some quite good close-up photos of this on the rather marvellous Melbourne City Art Deco Buildings page. Brian McMorrow’s mosaics gallery also has some good shots: Left / Centre / Right. Note the aeroplanes in the centre image, as well as printing presses and a copy of The Herald. (I think at the time, The Age was headquartered next door, at 233 Collins St.)

Oh, and apparently the neon sign on the top of the building is perhaps the oldest surviving neon sign in the city (though it no longer works).

Before there was this blog on danielbowen.com, it was on toxiccustard.com. And before it was a blog at all, it was an email list.

And actually the email list still exists, sending out the weekly extract of this blog, as well as the Guide to Australia (when I get around to updating it) and News You Had To Have (which has become my weird news blog), along with some headlines from Geekrant. One day I also hope to update the Great Vomits page.

The 800th edition of the weekly email is going out tonight. I must say, way back in 1990 when it started, I had no idea I’d still be doing it all these years later.

Watched some of that Planet Earth doco last night. Really wanted to see the water-wading monkeys featured in the promo. So much so that at one point I shouted at the TV in my best Jerry Macguire voice* “Show me the monkey!” But I had to do some other stuff away from the TV, so I may have missed them. Or maybe they’ll be in later episodes.

*Which isn’t actually up to much

David Attenborough was narrating, of course. It wouldn’t be the same without him. I wonder if they could sample his voice now, so after he passes away, the Beeb can keep doing documentaries with him digitally narrating? After all, they did that with John Mellion and the Vic Bitter adverts.

A grizzled old man in the supermarket queue tonight was bitching about petrol prices. “It’s criminal!” he was saying. I didn’t feel like trying to explain the concept of Peak Oil to him. Nor did I think telling him it was only going to get worse would placate him.

A more informed response to the issue from Ron Bowden (no relation of mine!) of the Service Station Association on Friday:

“The world is using crude oil faster than we can get it out of the ground and faster than we can find it - it’s a finite resource,” Mr Bowden said.

“We could do a lot better as a nation if we educated people that high petrol prices are a result of their own indulgence.

“We shouldn’t be trying to make petrol cheaper . . . it’s just making the problem worse for the next generation.”

Nice to see the guys on that side of the fence acknowledging there’s no magic solution to pricing, or that we should be subsidising it even more. There’ll be more on this issue on the telly on Monday night as respected current affairs programme Four Corners looks at Peak Oil. I’ll certainly be tuning in.

Dunno about the grizzled old man. He might prefer Law and Order: SUV SVU or something.

By the way, on the subject of driving, you remember the stupidly placed 40 and 60 speed limit signs? Well the 40 has come a cropper, hit by a car:

“Stupid people surround themselves with smart people. Smart people surround themselves with smart people who disagree with them.”
– Aaron Sorkin (creator of the West Wing)

I don’t know if the people who leave comments here necessarily disagree with me, but they do seem to be pretty smart. Over the past week I’ve learnt of doubts over recycling (plastics 4-7 will definitely be collected, but they may just get thrown away), and had confirmed my doubts over the lack of energy efficiency of halogen bulbs (downlights). And learnt more about the colour lime green than I knew before. All good stuff.

The human comment spammers, however, apparently aren’t smart enough to have worked out that I delete their comments on sight.

The Rugby State of Origin game was last night. You can tell the tourists are in town, from the number of cars with interstate numberplates rolling unwittingly down Swanston Street Walk, and the confused questions on the tram about using the ticket machines, and getting to St Kilda Beach.

Oh yeah, I just got a camera phone. So now I’ll have a camera with me virtually everywhere I go.

Ten years ago, I was in the States for a few weeks, and I recall a big concert to raise funds to give citizens camcorders, to capture the next big Rodney King beating-style incident. To help bring justice to the masses. Funny to think these days the technology’s so cheap many people have cameras in their phones.

Has it brought justice to the masses? Well increasingly images make the news these days, and the media are certainly making more and more use of pictures provided by the general public.

Stephen J Dubner writes on the Freakonomics blog:

He [Warren Buffett] was explaining why he wanted to give so much money [US$31 billion] to a foundation that mainly tries to alleviate poverty. “A market system has not worked in terms of poor people,” Buffett said.

Coming from Buffett, this statement isn’t much of a shock. But it certainly is an indictment—of the free-market system that has made so many people like Buffett very, very rich (though not as rich as him), of the system that so many economists and businesspeople and politicians and journalists believe in on so many dimensions, including its ability to help poor people stop being poor.

So much for trickle-down economics.

It would be nice to think that in Australia the safety net provided by Medicare and Social Security is a little better, but you still see the homeless out and about (even in winter), so it’s apparent that the worst-off in our society still need some help from the citizenry. Not to mention the impoverished nations of the world.

Warren Buffett I ain’t, but I could probably do better with my donation regime (currently outsourced to Community Aid Abroad/Oxfam, and the Salvation Army).

A new era has dawned in the City of Glen Eira. New recycle bins, with bright yellow lids, have been distributed (originally with crime-scene-style “Do not use until July” tape on them), and yesterday the new recycle truck did its first fortnightly run down our street.

There are three bits of good news associated with this:

• Firstly, all the recycling goes in the one big bin. No mucking about with separate cardboard/paper and bottle/can bins.
• They said we can do what we want with the old small recycle bins (same type as these). Yay, a freebie! Cleaned out, the bottle bin might make a good toy box.
• Best, they’re now accepting all plastic recycle codes (1 to 7). Previously they could only take 1 to 3.

(Josh, has your council upgraded too, or do you want to bring all your saved up 4 to 7 plastic over here?)