Somehow it slipped our notice that Saturday was the Cambodian New Year. Thanks to MuyLeng and YouTube we can see how our Cambodian community celebrated it.

Always good to get a limited blast of KhmerPop.

“Zero-tolerance”, like “paradigm” has become a term abused by morons seeking to mask their inadequacies to the point it has lost it’s original meaning and now serves merely to denote that an idiot is speaking.
Today Bill Stefaniak has called for a “zero tolerance” approach to bullying in schools.
Bill is trying to take the time immemorial [...]

The ABC has a piece on sections of Kambah living without telephones after a burst water main took out a chunk of cabling.
Curiously Ian Peters is comfortable and relaxed because most people have mobile phones anyway.
Notso hotso for internet.

It appears that due to a shortage of doctors, vasectomies are currently not available in Canberra. There is a waiting list and it is not known when the service will be available again.
If you’re interested in the job, the ad is here.

The SMH reports that our leaders are messing with the clocks again, this time deciding to extend daylight saving by four weeks.
It is believed the plan involves daylight saving starting on the first Sunday in October, and then a return to standard time on the first Sunday in April. For NSW, it would mean [...]

Katy Gallagher has announced that the first quarter of this year saw a 20% increase in the numbers of births in ACT Hospitals from the same period last year.
The baby boom is starting to kick in. We can only hope we can find schools for them all in six years.

It’s a beautiful calm morning in Belconnen and on walking out on the balcony I discovered what looked like an impressive horizon spaning fog had instead the strong smell of smoke. Burn off or something else?

[ED - It looks likely it has something to do with this ACT Govt mediarelease.
And if anyone has images of [...]

This morning Katy Gallagher was talking to the ABC and admitted that if you are going to have pay parking at a hospital then maybe it isn’t the brightest idea ever to expect people in need of the hospital to guess when they arrive how much money to load into a pre-paid voucher. At some [...]

Taxis in Canberra are a messy business because the ACT government chooses (with dubious legallity) to use the auction of taxi licences for revenue raising rather than simply recovering their costs. Artificial scarcity is used to keep prices high and taxis expensive and hard to find at peak periods.
Despite having already disastrously screwed the operation [...]

There might not be any Library services between Dickson and Woden at the moment (hmm, the exact route of the great cyclepath… coincidence? I think not…) but fortunately we’re now going to have virtual libraries with John Hargreaves announcing that something called the “Tumblebook Library” is going to be made available for all the kiddies [...]

Our other local Government, the National Capital Authority, has released plans for two kiosks near Commonwealth Place to be leased out for someone to sell something.

The kiosk buildings will allow for food and beverage sales, although the flexible design could accommodate a range or combination of uses depending on demand. Uses might include souvenirs [...]

The ABC reports that Andrew Barr is flinging $20 million on IT for schools.
Aside from bringing broadband to schools, and some video conferencing gear which might allow principals to spend some time actually in their schools rather than attending endless meetings about all the meetings they’re having, there’s an attention getter:
Education Minister Andrew Barr says [...]

People are fat. Obesity is a huge problem in our country.
People dance. People get very sweaty, drunk, friendly and fit when they dance.
People dance to Dahahoo.
www.myspace.com/dahahoo

No need for that futsal slab, or the lush lawns of the Parliamentary precinct. This group of bare chested young lads (backpackers?) decided Parkes was a nice place to stop their van and kick a soccer ball around, for a good half hour, on this autumn day.

As you do.

John Hargreaves has announced the Easter Egg Foil Ball Competition to be held in our schools for a $1,000 prize.
“Territory and Municipal Services is giving a school the opportunity to win $1000 by making the ACT’s (and maybe even the world’s) biggest Easter egg foil ball,” said Mr Hargreaves.
“All schools have to do is [...]

The PCYC in Turner is being converted into dollars for the AFP in Canberra – shame shame shame

Most, well a fair number at any rate, Riot posts can be considered a bit of a joke and if not the post themselves then a lot of the comments definitely can but the REAL media in this town (ie the ones that can afford to pay their staff) normally have a April Fools story [...]

The Stanhope Tyranny continues to refuse to provide basic services in favour of running “inclusion committees” and keeping the highly paid in public housing.
The ABC reports that an intrepid bunch convened by Julie McCarron-Benson (she makes for interesting googling) is starting up their own library for the Inner South.
It’ll be interesting to see how they [...]

The Canberra Times has a lengthy piece on what is going to happen to all the real estate Canberra’s closed schools are sitting on.
Mr Hargreaves dashed industry hopes the land would be sold to build more housing, despite Canberra’s property squeeze.
He told The Canberra Times nearly all the sites would remain intact, in case [...]

Acccording to the Barr’s latest media release, the latest school census results are available. He has put an interesting spin in what is a very bad news story for the government.
The data show, suprise, surprise, that families flee the public system when you close a heap of public schools, be mean to their families, say [...]

This article is in news.com.au today.
“There tended to be a net loss for about one and a half decades from Canberra to Sydney, but that seems to have changed,” Professor Burnley said.
ABS data showed 717 more people moved from Sydney to Canberra than in the other direction, and 242 more people moved from Sydney [...]

Ducks emailed in the following joke doing the rounds which we thought amusing enough to be noteworthy:
So, just how many Canberra district school students does it take to change a
light bulb?
– Canberra Girls Grammar – One. She holds the bulb and the world revolves around her.
– Narrabundah College – Two. One to change the bulb [...]

As seen at 10.30am at 39 Macleay Street Turner.
Bonfire anyone?

Our Glorious Leader has trumpetted the solution to a growing dearth of libraries in Canberra.
It seems the Civic Library is closed for the forseeable future after its roof turned out to not be up to scratch back in the supercell thunderstorm of a month ago. Griffith Library of course was worth more dead to developers [...]

hey everyone/anyone…
what’s the story about limestone liz? all my mates laugh their heads off when i mention it and i feel embarassed to approach oter people to ask… im sorry if its something distasteful (i kinda think i know what she does… :/ ) but just want to see what her story is, if anyone [...]

The ABC is warning about the perils of the much beloved South Coast of NSW. It seems the mosquitos have been thriving and getting much about. The result is a risk of both Barmah Forest Virus and Ross River Fever.
We’ll be back to sleeping under mosquito nets in no time!

Always thought Canberra was living in the past? Well you are now or did or…. I don’t know but just don’t forget to set you clocks BACK one hour as Daylight saving time finished for another year last night. If you are even a slightly bit confused have a look here (bless the ABC).

If you’re interested in reducing landfill, or want to know more about the environmental issues around cloth nappies, tune into 666 ABC AM at about 2:20pm.
They’ll be talking to Amanda, organiser of Reusable Nappy Week events in Canberra.
To find out more about RNW, read here:
www.modernclothnappies.org

A little bit of reverse Canberra bashing in todays SMH.
Worth a quick read.
Warning: do not fall off chair!

Here’s some rather amusing footage of a group of Japanese navigating the streets of Canberra immediately after the super-cell thunderstorm.

Translation anyone?

The Canberra Times is up in arms (on behalf of concerned academics of course) over ANU’s decision to give Singapore’s former PM Lee Kuan Yew an honorary doctorate.
While I wouldn’t describe Lee Kuan Yew’s regime as ideal, I’ve also noticed that the vast majority of Singaporeans I’ve met regard him with a great deal of [...]

Many things have been named after our fair city; a US Navy heavy cruiser, a jet bomber, and er… Well to ad to that list today we stumbled upon the “Victorinox Canberra Dual-Access Laptop Pack” from the makers of shiny Swiss army knives.

Also rounding out their range of bags is the Oxford and the Bond.
Anything [...]