Etc

A British nurse, Greig Ferguson, reportedly got a top job with a "drastically embellished" CV which included the claim that he had worked at County General, the Chicago hospital featured on television drama ER. Since he got caught out, I've decided to erase the Daily Planet, the Hill Valley Telegraph, the Daily Prophet and the Canley Evening News from my resume.

I was going to get around to writing a light-hearted list of predictions for 2010 -- you know, the kind that includes generalisations that can be broadly interpreted and are bound to come true at least once in 365 days. On the list would have been something like "a prominent sportsman will be involved in an off-field incident that will jeopardise his playing career". It seems that one has already come true in respect to rugby league player Todd Carney, who allegedly set a man's pants on fire on New Year's Eve (after midnight, I'm hoping, or it would have to have been included in the 2009 predictions).

So you think you've got nothing to look forward to? Think again. According to various sources, 2010 will be the:
+ year of the Girl Guide (Australia);
+ year of the tiger (Chinese astrology);
+ international year of biodiversity (UN);
+ international year of the nurse (UN);
+ year of tablet computer (or, according to other geek sources, the Linux desktop, the smartphone, the flat-screen TV, cloud computing, mobile phones, better Xbox 360 games, the AMD Opteron or the e-book);
+ year we make contact (blurb for the 1984 film 2010);
+ year of the community manager;
+ international year for the approchement of cultures (Unesco);
+ year of the magazines (Media Guardian);
+ year of the Inuit (Canada);
+ year of the seafarer (International Maritime Organization);
+ year of the lung (Forum of International Respiratory Societies);
+ year of great consequences (Pravda);
+ year of severe economic contraction (Global Research);
+ year of the fertilizer bargain (agriculture.com);
+ year of the Bible (US Republican Party); and the
+ 52nd year of the revolution (Cuba)

You can find these signs in various parts of Russia. Presumably they are aimed at the owners, rather than the pets themselves, but I'm not sure how you stop a dog from answering the call of nature. Cleaning up afterwards is another matter, of course.

Announcement on Fortitude Valley station about 6.10am today:

An express train not stopping at this station will pass Platform 7 in two minutes, please stand behind the yellow safety line.

Fortitude Valley station has only four platforms -- unless there's some sort of Harry Potter-type thing going on that we mere Muggles don't know about.

I'm flying to Europe in three weeks, which means for the next 21 days I can expect to read more stories like this: "Qantas pilots forgot to lower wheels".

Politicians, businesspeople and public servants have all embraced the phrase "going forward", especially when it relates to their "future plans". How many of them expect to go backwards while making plans for the past?

Psssst. Fancy attending a "Generic Wizard Night"? Well, get in contact with Ms Marmite Lover at the Underground Restaurant, a "pop-up" establishment in a West London home, where the menu was originally inspired by the Harry Potter books and films. Diners were to have ventured down Diagon Alley (the side of the house) to enjoy dandelion wine, pumpkin soup and mint humbugs. But Ms Lover received a letter from Warner Bros telling her how delighted they were that she loved Harry Potter but to hold such a themed event would be an infringement of copyright. Thus the name change. More here.

Britain's Gordon Brown may be headed for electoral defeat next year, but at least he is sexier than Kevin Rudd. That's according to this website* that rates world leaders on the basis of "hotness". No. 1 is Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister of Ukraine (pictured) -- and it would be difficult to argue against that judgment. Brown is 84th, Rudd 93rd and Barack Obama is 15th. The top 10 includes Jens Stoltenberg (Norway), Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck King (Bhutan), Joseph Kabila (DR Congo), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Grand Duke Henri (Luxembourg), Roosevelt Skerrit (Dominica), Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (Philippines) and Bamir Topi (Albania). At the bottom of the list is North Korea's Kim Jong-il, just trailing Pope Benedict.
* Obviously, I have no control over the comments made on this linked site.

I went to dinner with a friend recently, and we decided to split the bill. As we were tallying up, I said to my friend: "Should we leave a tip?" His response: "No. We're not in America." So it comes as no surprise to me that an American Express survey reveals that Queenslanders are the worst tippers in Australia. I often do tip, and I always do when I'm overseas. But others argue that doing so just encourages establishments to underpay their staff, or gives them an opportunity to rip us off. I guess the upshot is that a tip should be a reward for good service, not an obligation on the diner.

Karl Lagerfeld says nobody wants to see curvy women on fashion runways. Well, I don't want to see him on the catwalk, let alone listening to his fashion dictates. Who's with me?

This morning I saw a bloke with a leaf-blower blowing jacaranda flowers from a private driveway on to the public footpath, where pedestrians were walking over them. After a bit of rain, they'll create a nasty slipping hazard. If it's me who falls over, I'll be suing the firm that employs the guy with the blower.

An Oxford University experiment has shown that adults who learned to juggle showed changes in the white matter in their brains. "We tend to think of the brain as being static, or even beginning to degenerate, once we reach adulthood,'' expert Heidi Johansen-Berg, said. "In fact we find the structure of the brain is ripe for change. We've shown that it is possible for the brain to condition its own wiring system to operate more efficiently.'' In other words, you can teach old dogs new tricks.

I must be getting old; I've found something on which I agree with Prince Philip. He says television remotes are too complicated, and he's right. I don't mind that there's a hundred buttons, as long as they do something, but I do mind that the ones you need the most aren't larger and more obvious.