Underthinking Manliness

So I have started to notice these strange ads coming out of America, regarding the manliness of his drink choice. Which we have all done before, there are just certain drinks that a man shouldn't drink unless he is on his stag do and it is some sort of humiliation.

If you are drinking a cosmopolitan, you better be wearing a ball and chain and have an inflatable sheep strapped to you.

 That is fine, especially since the topic of these ads are light beer, which is like real beer but with less calories. And what is more unmanly then counting calories.

Light beer here. My tushie is getting too big.

But apparently after watching the ad (below) that wasn't what they were getting at....

Apparently it is unmanly NOT to drink light beer, say what?! This is would be a pretty good ad apart from the conclusion they are making.
So a real man will choose his drink based on the calorie content of it? This doesn't seem right. What's the calorie content of your favourite beer legendary All Black Colin Meads?

"The Flaming WHAT?! content?, what are you talking 'bout you mongrel"

Exactly I thought as much, in fact outside of America how many beers market themselves on calorie content. In NZ, light beer is beer with a lower alcohol content. Not less calories, in fact does anyone know, do we have low calorie beer in this country?

This is low-carb, which quite different if scienticians are to be believed.

I think maybe if they had targeted this ad, to suggest that not drinking light beer was 2nd most unhealthy decision today it would have made more sense since watching your calorie intake is more to do with your health than you manliness.

In case you were wondering the most unhealthy thing was the breakfast he chose.

I guess everyone has differences of opinion of what makes a man a man from wrestling bears for entertainment, to just being a good father.

"So, how was school?"

But I am pretty sure on anyone's list from Staff Sgt. Max Fightmaster (it's a real name, see!) to the most feminist of feminists, no one would suggest that drinking a low calorie beer made you manly.

OK, maybe the advertising company responsible for the ad, but no one else's list.

What frightens me even more is that it wasn't just one advertising agency that took low calories to mean more manly.

Oh gawd, it's spreading...

Underthinking Laser pointers

So on my drive yesterday I heard on the radio some boy has been charged on 5 counts of endangering transport. At first I thought what the hell was this kid doing that he endangered TRANSPORT? Did single-handedly wipe out all the oil in the world? as well as all forms of alternative energy, and all animals of carrying load? Who is this person?

"Okay, now I have taken out donkeys, time to get rid of all the oil"

Reading on further it turns out the name of the charge that means you did something to endanger a single unit of transport as opposed to all of it.
This kid had been sitting at his house with his laser pointer at planes overhead as well as the police helicopter that was looking for him, because that is how he planned to stay incognito.

"Look Bill, there are like a million houses down there, we will never find this kid...Oh wait there he is"

Some of you, are saying big deal, a wee dot isn't going to effect a pilots ability to fly. That is true but by the time that wee dot reaches the plane it is enought to light up the whole cabin.
Presumably that they have achieved the Disco effect for the Richard Simmons in-flight instructional.

"Tell that kid with the yellow laser he has got it just right'

But it actually is really dangerous, I am not saying the prosecution is underthinking. I don't actually understand the motivation of people that point the laser pointers at planes as they fly overhead. The impact on the pilots is horrendous, but from the ground you can hardly tell you have a plane can you?

"I think I pointing it at a plane, or maybe stars or a planet, nah it's definitely a plane"

How fun can it actually be? If you actually want to have fun with a laser pointer you just point it at the wall and confuse the family cat.

Haha, hilarious. but I digress. Although that video has 26,000 views maybe I should just change this site, into  collection of cats chasing laser videos.
But maybe we misunderstand the miscreant, maybe he was trying to point out a plane flying by to one of his friends, and they just couldn't see it. We have all tried to show someone something in the distance and been exasperated by the experience.

"Follow my finger...Just follow my finger...what the hell Billy? You are looking completely opposite direction"

 You get to the point where you feel like grabbing their head and twist it in the correct direction and even then they still manage to not see it.

"Nah, still can't see it eh."

The poor kid was probably going through a similar situation and said screw it, I am using a laser pointer because this is getting ridiculous.

"F***n right there, right there, god damn it"

Underthinking Awkward questions

So I missed Friday's entry sorry about that, was slightly busy being a Doctor.

Can I use a misquote in a community newspaper on an Academic CV?

So my apologies, in the weekend I was reading an article that suggested it had the top 10 most awkward questions asked my kids. I was looking forward to reading this article, to see some cringe-worthy questions. I was expecting "Where do babies come from?", "Why were you and Uncle Francisco wrestling on the bed last night?" and "How long until you give birth dad?"

I would say Sextuplets in the next few minutes.

Instead what I got was a list of questions that were reasonably difficult to answer on the spot, but anyone with a normal education should have an educated guess at, or a smartphone could answer in 3 seconds.

"And that kids is where babies come from.."

The only thing awkward about these questions was the fact you weren't clever enough to give the answer or know how to find it out immediately. I knew the article was off to a bad start when it listed three question in what it claimed was order of increasing difficultly.

1/. "Would a shark beat a dinosaur in a fight?"
2/. "Why is the sky blue?"
3/. "How much does the earth weigh?"

It claimed question 3 was near impossible to answer, where as it is probably the easiest to answer as it has a numerical answer, something do with Newtons laws and what not but a quick trip to the google machine nets an estimate of 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg.

That possibly doesn't take into account earth's new exercise regime.

Question 2, I guess slightly more abstract and you can mumble things about the light spectrum and rainbows, until google tells you it is because of the Rayleigh scattering.
Question 3. which they claim is simple is probably the hardest of all the questions due to the lack of information in the formation of it. Google was no help at all. First of all what kind of shark and what kind of dinosaur are we talking about. If it was a dogfish vs a Raptor then probably a Raptor as evidenced by these photos.

Round 1 : Dinosaurs.

Even if you knew the species in the fight, the location of the fight would probably have a large effect on the outcome, on land - Dinosaur, in the deep sea - Shark. In the Shallows then all bets are off. Would the t-rex's short arms prove a hindrance? Would it just be able to fall on the shark? In which case is there even a winner?

"Ok Billy, you really have stumped Mummy, I will build some scale replicas and we will run some simulations on it"

So here for your eyes is the list of the most "awkward" questions children ask.

The 10 most awkward questions:

1. Why is the moon sometimes out in the day? 
2. Why is the sky blue?
3. Will we ever discover aliens?
4. How much does the earth weigh?
5. How do airplanes stay in the air?
6. Why is water wet?
7. How do I do long division?
8. Where do birds/bees go in winter?
9. What makes a rainbow?
10. Why are there different time zones on earth?

Most of these questions can be answered with some basic knowledge for example, Question 10. Why are there different time zones on earth? the earth is spinning on its axis, that creates the day and night, therefore different areas will have the sun rise at different times so we have arbitrarily decided to peg sunrise to about 6-7 am to do this we need split the earth into timezones. How arbitrary are they you ask? Well Russia decided it had too many so just got rid of 2 of them.

"I have change watch too many times, get rid of some."

Some are slightly more zen. Question 6. Why is water wet? There is no real answer to that. Go try and answer it. - I will concede that one

"IT'S WET, COS I SAY IT IS."

Also how old are these kids? If we are talking under 7's - what are they asking how to do long division for? 

"Dad I have worked out the average size of a lego block and the size of my castle can you teach me long division so I can estimate the number of legos I have?"

One brightspark suggested all you needed to do to answer these questions was to check out www.anyquestions.co.nz which sounded like a wonderful resource where librarians teach kids how to answer questions. And too be fair for how to find out things like selling NZ land it gave good links.
For more knowledge based questions it suggested you use "Google" or as a hot tip try using "Wikipedia", because a 10 year old kid wouldn't have tried there first. You could rewrite that entire website, so it was just a landing page that had a link to Google.

"Come here kids, and I will teach you a secret, I don't know anything either. Just google it"