Plot device for a detective novel

I noticed in the maths lift the other day that on an LED screen a "2" is a mirror reversal of "5." I feel sure this could be be used in a whodunnit thriller of some kind. Perhaps the murder victim took a photo moments before he died in an elevator, the picture seeming to show that he was on level 5, thus granting an alibi to someone (known to be on level 2 somehow) who would otherwise be a suspect. Let's say it was a double murder, with the other victim (not the photographer), partly visible in the shot. Near the end of the book, the strained detective (possibly suspended from the force by his no-nothing lieutenant (or if a private investigator, fired by the victim's newly wealthy heiress(which may or may not be a red herring))), suddenly discovers upon closer inspection that the wedding ring of the other victim is on the wrong hand, and thus, that the entire shot is actually of a mirror opposite to the lift door. I could weave in some subtle hints about mirrors throughout the book, so much so that an avid reader would, upon conclusion of the mystery, grasp her head in her hands and exclaim "Of course, the answer was staring me in the face all along!" But I can't write that novel now. I've just given away the ending in a blog post

In which I watch commercial television

So I was watching an ad the other day from the Queensland government. It told me that I should be eating more vegetables. At the end of the ad it said something like "Queensland (something to do with health) association. Working to ensure that Queenslanders are the healthiest people in Australia." Now maybe this says something about my personality, but surely the easiest way to accomplish this is to simply detonate radioactive dirty bombs in the major cities of all the other states? Or as Chris points out, at least run ad campaigns in the other states encouraging junk food and binge drinking?

Oh Chris? Well if I'm so retarded, how come I found a mobile Dharma station right in the middle of Kuala Lumpur?

Not my problem John...

I for one, have no illusions about which Indiana Jones character I most resemble

You want to find Sam? Forget it. He's already got a day's head start, which is more than he needs. He's got friends in every village from Melaka to Sa-Pa, he speaks a dozen languages, he'll blend in with the crowd, disappear; my guess is you'll never see him again

In which i am at uni after midnight

Chris has some weirdo christian on gmail complaining that bloggers only produce silly, unlettered rants that don't add anything to considered opinion or mainstream society. To counter this I offer my thoughts on a few salient issues.
The Rebel Alliance seems pretty racist. Not as bad as as using the death star to blow up Alderaan mind you, but compared to us, they are not very evolved.
"Will somebody get this big walking carpet out of my way?" That, ladies and gentlemen, I call snide. I guess it just reflects the evolving moral zeitgeist (from a long time ago in a galaxy far far away).
On the other hand, the Mon Calamari do seem to be the only ones commanding starfleets these days. Maybe its a rare example of the dominant culture rather condescendingly "giving" the under culture one cool trait that apparently only they can do well. You know, like man "Humans, can't command starfleets." Maybe they could make a movie with that as their title, or even a whole series of Calamarixploitation such films. Of course inevitably we would witness the rise of so-called "Hulamaris," rich kids that, much to their parents chagrin, reject the traditional, WASHish pursuits like lightsaber duelling, and instead only want to command enormous
fleets of organically shaped hyperdrive equipped capital ships like those no-good ne-er-do-well's who always ask them for money on the street.

The only upside to all this is that we could eventually look forward to another movie about a particularly talented Hulamari, rising from humble, human trash beginnings, butting his head against an entrenched establishment of Mon Calamaris, with their own set of prejudices, and their own little club blocking ascension to those deemed "not fish enough" -oops sorry, did I offend your liberal sensibilities? I forgot that use of the `f' word was a faux pas now, in the politically correct straitjacket of a world in which we are now imprisoned. Anyway, such a movie would really make one think. And it can't be worse than the prequels.

In other news, Kim and I are going to Malaysia tommorrow. This time we will try to keep the weight down.

Parched

I have been following John Quiggin's excellent blog lately. He was recently on a radio national program about the politics of water in Australia and the world. You can listen to the discussion here. Once again however, there was a gigantic elephant in the room called overpopulation that nobody wanted to talk about.

Only one of the speakers touched on it, and then only very briefly. In a closed economy (like planet Earth), demand for water -and indeed every natural resource- is driven by two things: per capita demand, and population. The bigger our population, the more we must constrain our lifestyles in the long term.

In discussions like these we often treat population levels as a given, but here in Australia we are doing everything we can to increase our population as fast as possible. At the same time, we seem completely unable to talk about the consequences for the environment and our enjoyment of life. Until we face up to this, and start including population as one half of the argument in any discussion about natural resources, we cannot hope to truly deal with the problem.

“They would have been happier having someone closer to president Bush's policies.”

The quote in the title is from this article, about al-Qa'ida getting worried about Obama's popularity.

Now that's funny isn't it? I thought they would "pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats." Could John Howard have been wrong?