The totally off-topic thread

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I'm surprised the Thai road toll is so low.

When a car is coming at you at 80 km/h make sure you do the slowest possible U-Turn in front of them.
 
kpc said:
Hypothetical: If a person who at one stage held, albeit temporariiy, the highest job in our nation, had / is having an affair, is it in the public interest, esp if he is now seeking reelection? Just wondering....
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Generically I don't care. Their personal life, their choices.

However, if they stand on a policy of religion or is otherwise claiming to be morally superior to others, then it's open fodder. Likewise if they are diddling the public purse to entertain their "friend"
 
JohnK said:
I'm surprised the Thai road toll is so low.

When a car is coming at you at 80 km/h make sure you do the slowest possible U-Turn in front of them.
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Iranian road toll 18,000 per annum; population abt 80 million. Driving around, it's easy to see why.
 
On topic.Venice is to ban large cruise ships from sailing past St.Marks by building a new cruise terminal so probably years away.
Cruise ships to be denied access to Venice St Mark's - English

Off topic the BBC makes a howler by saying large cruise ships will be banned from the Grand Canal.:rolleyes::eek::D
Big cruise ships face Venice canal ban
Italy's government has decided to ban big cruise ships from Venice's Grand Canal.

Activists warned the many ships in tourism season were a conservation risk that eclipsed the beauty of the city and flooded it with tourists.
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VPS said:
They are saying at least 4 years so knowing Italy it could be a lot longer
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This has been slated for years. Its why larger ships excluded Venice from its itinerary a couple of years ago but it never happened.
 
Wow - crowd goes wild. Fantastic haka show down.

nah, wrong one. Will try again in a sec.

Here
 
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RB said:
Flight to quality? Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance?
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In 1987 it was actually the opposite that occurred. The 'hot stocks' that had plummeted in value by up to 90+% (search "Tasmanian Second Board" to get an idea) experienced seller no buyer. Some did not trade for over two years - meanwhile badly performed fund managers who had promised the opposite (and been rewarded by the wholesale consultants for their strategies of going in every float possible for as much as they could get) saw clients sack them and the replacement fund managers (us - given about 2/3rds of all sacked managers' funds through to 1990) would not take 'in specie' transfers for companies that were worthless but still valued at cost in many instances.

So the good stocks were often sold as they were partially liquid. At the same time, funds that had been as high as 85% in equities reduced to the 60% range -and again the only way they could was by selling what they could sell.

Kudos to Holmes a Court - we exercised a (what had been) way-out-of-the-money put he sold us at less than half its true value (his way of gaining leverage over the BHP board in that he claimed exposure to BHP at face value not the delta of the option).

We exercised the put on the morning of October 20 and a bank cheque for 9 figures duly arrived 3 days later for 70% of our BHP holding. Unlike several VERY large "Pillars" who defaulted on their SFE margin calls on October 20.

Whilst the description "past performance..." is widely used as a disclaimer - it is not always true. For example AMP under-performed us over every rolling (taken a monthly rests) for over 15 years. National Mutual was not much better, Colonial Mutual had an 8 year run (of 3 yrly performance) under us.

Process is very important but having the right people to run the process is crucial and that IMHO is what you need to watch. For example, a number of our group subsequently left and started up their own businesses which more than 20 years on continue to outperform whereas the 'politicians' left behind whilst paying themselves mega bonuses ran the business into the ground so that by 1995 its history of out-performing ended and pretty much since then it has under-performed. Getting rid of the person who as one of their 20+ "hats" did the internal attribution analysis and had the hide to report when one director disobeyed an instruction to cut $150m from an Asian market and actually poured another $80m into it (which subsequently dropped close to 20%), another director had 'traded' the Aussie against orders and lost close to $70m - saw the role abandoned. And the performance headed south ever since.

BTW that 'sacrificial lamb' had been solely responsible for just under $1bn of funds under mgmt growth (as none of the hierarchy wanted anything to do with funds that could never outperform the balanced fund) whilst the balanced funds had dropped $300m prior to October 20 due to redemptions...

Oddly enough, those funds DID outperform the balanced (higher risk) funds - which did not make him at all popular as it was.
 
drron said:
Well it is quite public knowledge in some parts of the country.It was put out on twitter but the original tweet was withdrawn.The affair in question was over 20 years ago.
Considering who made the original tweet it was highly inappropriate.
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Keating the Musical had a brilliant take on a previous liaison. Hilarious it was too! :)
 
Car park full or too lazy to look for parking? No worries. Just start a new lane parking behind those that are parked nearest the mall.

How or when will those cars parked there get out? Who cares? No one can block me in and I'm the only one that matters.
 
JohnK said:
Car park full or too lazy to look for parking? No worries. Just start a new lane parking behind those that are parked nearest the mall.

How or when will those cars parked there get out? Who cares? No one can block me in and I'm the only one that matters.
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Until the contract tow truck comes along.
 
JohnK said:
Car park full or too lazy to look for parking? No worries. Just start a new lane parking behind those that are parked nearest the mall.

How or when will those cars parked there get out? Who cares? No one can block me in and I'm the only one that matters.
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Any European city or perhaps Indooroopilly shopping centre?
 
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For Rooflyer.. :-)

Just love these words….word for the day...

paedomorphism

context : Both neoteny and progenesis result in paedomorphism

I wonder.. why is it that anthropologists (and their learned brethren in other fields) find a need to use these obscure words to describe concepts that could be easily elucidated in case ( clear and simple english)
 
tgh said:
For Rooflyer.. :)

Just love these words….word for the day...

paedomorphism

context : Both neoteny and progenesis result in paedomorphism

I wonder.. why is it that anthropologists (and their learned brethren in other fields) find a need to use these obscure words to describe concepts that could be easily elucidated in case ( clear and simple english)
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Isn’t that what GIYF means?
 
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