Exasperated Calculator

Announcements:

• Coalition announces $444m for more doctors and nurses.

• ALP announces a national public holiday hospital report card system.

Other: Not a good day for Tony Abbott.

24 days to go.

Beautiful typographic art.

I love fonts.

A very unstable bookcase

Probably not what you want if you are trying to encourage people to read.

A guide to when it’s safe to eat people with various diseases.

Hopefully I’ll never need it, but handy to know…

Where plants and animals fit in the scheme of things.

It’s amazing just how much of the genetic variation in the world is in things smaller than can be seen.

The new version of Microsoft Live Maps will give you directions that include signs that you’ve gone too far.

Better, but the future is probably when the online maps begin to link up with GPS systems.

Announcements:

• Coalition announces $168m in training vouchers for small business.

• ALP announces a 20 per cent renewable energy target for 2020.

Polls: Newspoll ALP 54-46.

Other: The great debate (Treasurer edition).

25 days to go.

Petter Sellers runs through the various English accents.

Quite brilliant.

How to make a fake bloody gash.

If only Australia took this one seriously, it could be quite a bit of fun. Try Georgetown (Washington DC) on Halloween to see what real Halloween is like.

A push for plain English in US government forms and laws.

But, as always in politics, George Orwell was there first.

Qantas buys 12 planes, and one week later that model is grounded in Europe.

Of course, this is far far better than the other way around.

Why the movie Saw is good for middle managers.

The Saw movies (and their close cousins, the Hostel movies) are the worst trash Hollywood has ever made.

Average fare from my house to Canberra Airport: $45-50

Current fare from Canberra to Melbourne on Tiger: $49.95

Announcements:

• ALP announces a plan to save the Great Barrier Reef ($200m).

• Coalition announces 100 new Australian Technical Colleges. ($270m, but $2 billion over ten years).

Other: Downer and McClelland to meet in a debate in mid November.

Line of the day: Disendorsed family first candidate Andrew Quah, :

I might have been drunk off my face or my political enemies might have drugged me.

A real loss to Australian Politics.

26 days to go. Everyone go buy your advent calendar (conveniently available in stores now) to count down the rest of the campaign.

The company anthem for computer game company Infogrames.

The worst part is not actually the existence of the anthem so much as the words…

A Darth Vader alarm clock

Fortunately, my snooze button is more powerful than he can possibly imagine.

A cheeseboard that also works as a whiteboard.

I shudder to think what would happen if this was allowed near most economists…

Make your own sugar skulls.

Delicious and scary, can’t beat that!

A fireplace designed in a more modern way.

People who know my aesthetic preferences probably already know that I think this looks really good…

Annoucements:

• ALP: $1 billion for urban desalination projects through a 10% tax credit.

• Coalition: $393m for skills training through vouchers (for those over 25 and without a year 12 equivalent].

Other: Some fuss for the PM: 2004 claims about interest rates, and leaks from Cabinet about Kyoto.

Line of the day: John Howard, displaying tremendous consistency:

What matters is precisely what happens in the future

And, in the same interview:

The housing interest rate - now at 8.3 per cent - is lower than at any time under the former Labor Government

27 days to go, at Alice’s Restaurant.