Crisis

Korea isn't suffering a Financial Crisis, Vice Finance Minister Kim says <-- great headline on bloomberg yesterday.

Cheap

I'm watching 'Four Corners' - a current affairs show on our state-owned broadcaster - and the story this week is that the two big supermarket chains here in Australia are using their buying power to strike aggressive bargains with their suppliers, which they then pass on to consumers. I know, I'm as horrified by this as you are.

They found a guy who owns a company that makes ice-cream, and he said that he buys the milk that goes into the ice-cream from the supermarket at retail price, because if he asks the dairy companies for a wholesale price it's higher. So to source this crucial raw ingredient he drives to the supermarket, buys milk and saves about 30%. And he was whingeing about it.

Naive.

I was having dinner tonight in the local Japanese (actually Korean) noodle place when I overheard a conversation that I just have to share.

A young man and a young woman, mid20s, by the look of them. Not a date, maybe just friends. He started telling her that he'd been to see some sort of therapist about his allergies, and went on to describe how they put a vial containing a possible antagonist in your hand, then see whether you can generate any force with your arm (they push down on your arm gently, you resist). The idea is that if the vial contains something you're allergic to, you won't have the strength. They do this over and over again with different allergens.

He said to her that they'd told him this was because the electromagnetic field of the allergen interfered with the electromagnetic field of the body (which seemed to him to be entirely reasonable, I guess).

They'd tested the things he knew he was allergic to, and sure enough he was indeed allergic to pollen and dog hair. But then, he told her, they had tested for other things and it turned out he was allergic to things he didn't even know he was allergic to! And even better, not only could they cure the allergies he knew he had, they could also cure these extra ones! And only $85 each!

There's something almost touching about this sort of naivite. He didn't stop and think "hang on.. this guy's in the business of selling allergy 'cures', so it's in his interest to diagnose lots and lots of allergies". And before you jump in, yes, I'm sure your cousin Vicky was cured like this and has never looked back.

He said that part of the cure involved being hooked up to a machine (which, I can imagine had a few dials and stuff, probably a couple of LEDs too) which did something that neutralized the electromagnetic field. And then, no more asthma, no more hay fever. And no more of those allergies he didn't even know he had.

Flooded

A little thing in the Australian on Friday caught my eye, and before you ask, no I won't provide a link. Two reasons. 1) I'm lazy, and 2) the Oz is strangely hard to search.

Page 5. An article's first sentence is "The Department of Immigration has been flooded with 85 applications from World Youth Day pilgrims seeking to remain in Australia - and that number is predicted to rise."

How's that flooded, exactly? Is 85 more than expected? Clearly the sub-editors at the Oz want us to feel like it's a lot. If all we have is the number - 85 - then you could just as easily write "Only 85 of the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have applied to stay in Australia, relieved Immigration officials say."

If this keeps up, I'll have to go back to the Fairfax press.

Less is more.

There was a thing in the Australian on Friday that was mind-numbingly stupid, and I just have to share it with you.

It starts out by saying that the share of the nation's wealth held by older people has increased. Which you'd expect. Then it says..

However the escalation in the share of wealth of older Australians has offset a falling share held by their younger counterparts.

Err.. if the share held by older people has gone up, then the share held by younger people would have gone down. There's no 'however' about it.

More Olympics

Useful rule: Any sport where people wear makeup isn't really a sport.

Medal Tally

I've not been following the Olympics much - I'm interested, but not that interested, and I'm a little uneasy about the way that the coverage we get here assumes that we're only interested in the Australian competitors. Now I don't want to sound too effete and metropolitan here - and I especially don't want to sound un-Australian - but I can't help thinking there are other great stories, some raw human drama, in the Games that doesn't necessarily involve Grant Hackett or Stephanie Rice.

I was looking in the paper today and I caught sight of the Medal Tally. There's two ways to represent this. You can say that what matters is the total number of medals that have been won (Gold = Silver = Bronze = A Medal), or you can do it by ranking the countries by the number of Gold Medals won, and using Silver and then Bronze as a tie-breaker. The second method makes a lot more sense to me. I mean, when we talk about Michael Phelps we say he won 8 Gold Medals in this olympics, not that he won 8 Medals. Had he won silver in that one where the other guy got really close it would have changed the story completely.

Of course I'm sensitive to the argument that this sort of strict ranking implies that a Gold is worth more than any number of Silvers. And you could conceivably work out some sort of exchange rate to allow for that (5 Bronze = Silver, 5 Silver = Gold) but we'd all have different ones, and it'd be just arbitrary.

Anyway, I was looking at the medal tally today and I was shocked and dismayed to see that Great Britain is ahead of Australia. Yes, you read that right. Great Britain. I don't begrudge them this, I'm just a little surprised. China, yes. US, yes. But Britain? If they had medals for comedy, littering, drinking, vomiting, being cross and looking sick I could understand it.