Monday night musings

Sunday night randomness has been brought forward to Monday as I wanted to get some stuff off my chest before it becomes old news - which I dare say most of it already is!

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Congratulations x 2: First, to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has become the first leader of a major world economy affected by the global credit crisis to be re-elected. Voters sent the Social Democrats (SDP) - Germany’s main left-wing party - into opposition after more than a decade as part of the government. The loss is the SDP’s worst parliamentary election result since World War II. Here is a graph of the breakdown of the voting.

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…and congrats to Alan Jones for re-introducing himself to 200,000 listeners across Sydney and the rest of NSW after three months off due to illness. I was up tuning in at 5.30 this morning, and, as I averred on a previous blog, Alan opened his show this morning with the comment “I hope I remember how to do this!” It will be interesting to see how 2GB handles the mooted experiment of having Alan on 4 days a week next year - Jones’ health necessitating the reduced workload. That will be interesting. What will be fascinating, is how other Sydney radio stations will counter-react.

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Canberra shivered through it’s coldest September day yesterday since 1969. The mercury struggled to get to 7.5 degrees. The temperature wasn’t so much my concern on Sunday, rather, the wind. I was being blown down the Hume Highway (for the most part it felt like I was driving into the teeth of the wind), after visiting Sydney for the weekend, and I struggled to keep my car within my lane. I cannot recall driving in more gusty weather. When you see a large coach in front of you swerve all over the road, I suppose many thoughts come to mind; not least of which is “I’m glad I’m not on a motorcycle.”

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The competition to name the new Vegemite-cheese-flavoured spread has ended with a web designer from Western Australia winning god-knows-what (notoriety?) for coming up with the winning entry of ‘iSnack 2.0’. I kid you not. Cross a product-naming competition with an Australian computer nerd and an American parent company and you should not be surprised that the result is unfettered lunacy.

Just back to the regular Vegemite for a second ... I have been eating the stuff for more than thirty years, and I have NEVER put it in the fridge!

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What do the letters E H I and S have in common? Try to work it out before scrolling down for the answer!

They are all just dots in Morse code. (E . | H .... | I .. | S ...)

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