The Feast of All Fools Friday

Fiona Uncategorized

Metro

Of course, the Brits claim to be the ones who made it an annual celebration:

English pranksters started playing practical jokes on one another on April 1st from at least 1700.

Anyone who is successfully fooled before midday is known as a ‘noodle’, ‘gob’, ‘gobby’ or ‘noddy’ while anyone doing the fooling after midday is considered a fool themselves.

and over the years there have been some extremely clever April Fools’ Day pranks – the spaghetti tree being a prime example:

Then there was the Republic of San Serriffe

Chiefa Coins

not to mention Australia’s own Great Sydney Iceberg:

Ninemsn

From across the ditch (and specially for Kaffeeklatscher) comes this interesting scientific study:

The Sheep Albedo Hypothesis

RealClimate.org detailed the work of Dr. Ewe Noh-Watt of the New Zealand Institute of Veterinary Climatology, who had discovered that global warming was caused not by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but rather by the decline of New Zealand’s sheep population. The reasoning was that sheep are white, and therefore large numbers of sheep increased the planet’s albedo (the amount of sunlight reflected back into space). As the sheep population declined, the ground absorbed more solar radiation, thus warming the planet: “It can be seen that the recent warming can be explained entirely by the decline in the New Zealand sheep population, without any need to bring in any mysterious so-called ‘radiative forcing’ from carbon dioxide, which doesn’t affect the sunlight (hardly) anyway — unlike Sheep Albedo.”

Noh-Watt also warmed of a potentially destabilizing feedback mechanism: “As climate gets warmer, there is less demand for wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep population tends to drop, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this can lead to a ‘runaway sheep-albedo feedback,’ which is believed to have led to the present torrid climate of Venus.”

However, skeptics disputed the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Steve Ramsturf, spokesman for the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild, was quoted as saying, “Baaah, Humbug. No matter what goes wrong with the world, they’re always trying to blame the poor New Zealand Sheep Farmer.”

Brilliant Buckets

As it is now past midday all around Australia, no Pubster runs the risk of being a noodle, gob, gobby or noddy, nor would any of us be so foolish as to try a prank.

Our Dear Leader may be in a different category.

Therefore, at RNM 1953’s excellent suggestion, let’s have a go this evening at suggesting the most ridiculous policies brainfarts waffles may emit over the next 13 weeks.

Have fun!

Specially for Gigilene . . .

Sky Dancing

428 thoughts on “The Feast of All Fools Friday”

  1. Scorps,

    Ah yes, the good old brick phone. OH – then at Telstra – had one of those.

  3. I am having trouble believing this. Telstra contacted all their customers and offered them all free internet today to make up for recent poor connective days & outings.

    Either they haven’t fixed their connective problems or there has been a total overload today because, my internet connection has been cutting out on & off for quite a number of hours, now.

    And it’s been a total pain in the ass all day! Thanks, Telstra!

    • how can any newspaper justify employing such a person? The whole thing must be a gutter journal. I have never read the Daily Smelly.

  10. TLBD

    The kiwis’ bankster PM could .

    The Panama papers: NZ – the quiet tax haven achiever

    …………Details of the Malta controversy, and its New Zealand connections, have emerged from 11.5 million tax haven records obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and more than 100 other media partners worldwide.

    The common thread is a Panamanian law firm with considerable influence in the Pacific, Mossack Fonseca.

    http://www.afr.com/business/banking-and-finance/the-panama-papers-nz–the-quiet-tax-haven-achiever-20160401-gnvw7s

  11. Good morning Dawn Patrollers.
    The more I use this iPad the more frustrated I get! It would definitely be impossible for mr to put together the Patrol with this useless device.
    I have had a look around the papers,etc and it would appear to be quite a slow news day. . . . So far.
    Have a good day Blusgers.

    • ” Blusgers.”…??..I see what you mean..but hey, isn’t there an App’.?

  12. An interesting former refugee:

    When she first arrived in Ireland as a 17-year-old refugee, Ifrah Ahmed was frightened and unsure.
    But what she remembers most was the cold – a biting merciless cold, never felt in her native Somalia. Nine years later, the cold is not a problem for the anti-female genital mutilation (FGM) campaigner, who found refuge in Ireland during the Somalian civil war.

    Wearing a full-flowing traditional African dress and veil, 26-year-old Ifrah has accessorised with six-inch heels, a grey suit blazer, chandelier earrings and a nose piercing as she poses playfully outside the GPO.
    In front of the camera, the former asylum seeker is full of confidence. Of course, she has to be, as she prepares to return home next month to her native Mogadishu, where she will be taking up the role of advisor on gender issues to the Somalian Prime Minister, Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke.

    Somalia is currently recovering from a decades-long civil war and is still under sustained guerrilla attacks from Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al-Shabab. Ifrah’s life will be under threat by her very presence in the country, especially given her outspokenness on women’s issues. But for the young woman who counts Mary Robinson as her main inspiration, it is nothing she hasn’t faced before.

    http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/news/ireland-is-home-but-i-have-to-change-somalia-34593820.html

  13. Perhaps Dr Jensen was not RWChristianNJ enough ? !!

    Andrew Forrest’s protege could be felled by Libs’ Christian Right

    Some Liberals had believed Dr Jensen would win the backing of the party’s so-called Christian Right faction and its powerbroker Nick Goiran, but nobody at ­yesterday’s meeting spoke in favour of Dr Jensen, suggesting Mr Goiran did not back him.

    In the newly created seat of Burt, however, Mr Goiran’s ­favoured candidate, Liz Storer, was preselected at the weekend over Matt O’Sullivan, a protege of mining magnate Andrew Forrest.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/andrew-forrests-protege-could-be-felled-by-libs-christian-right/news-story/9213e9ffef12bd132b118b8eccf31776

  15. BK

    Oy, you are supposed to be resting and relaxing. You should have left your work ethic at home. 🙂 We hope the weather is good for you the whole week.

  19. Fraudband: not coming to a place near you

    Leaked internal planning documents confirm significant parts of the fibre to the node (FTTN) part of the Coalition’s multi-technology-mix national broadband network have fallen behind schedule, despite recent assurances by Communications Minister Mitch Fifield that earlier reports of problems were incorrect.

    The two internal NBN documents obtained by The Australian Financial Review combine to show that NBN’s expectations for the completion of numerous parts of the FTTN network by April 1 were missed, with some areas delayed by as much as 87 days.

    http://www.afr.com/technology/web/nbn/fresh-nbn-leaks-showing-fttn-delays-raise-broadband-policy-questions-20160331-gnv0uz

  21. Where some a lot of our money is going

  23. From over the road. A post of a comment in the GG. Nicely put. I’ve heard “silver tongued” applied to Truffles a zillion times but fcuked if I have ever heard Truffles display any.

    I’m a bit over everyone talking about how smart Turnbull is. Unless he’s in a soft interview, he can’t answer a question to save himself.

    He starts a sentence, goes off on a tangent, interrupts his tangent, qualifies his tangent, waffles around his tangent, asks if he can start again and ……

    Seriously if this is smart … well give me dumb.”

    • He’s a worm tongue, not a silver tongue.

      He’s useless at answering any question.

  24. Well done to my son. he heard loud screams from a woman in a unit a street away in her flat so he called cops. I have no details of what happened and he probably won’t ever know either. But he could have saved a life.

    • ABC News 24 Verified account
      ‏@ABCNews24
      BREAKING !!…Cops called to unit in Adelaide suburb after hearing woman screaming..: Large mouse took three bullets, spider ; one size 11 shoe!….
      Police now searching for caller…if anyone knows his name , please call “Crime-stoppers”..

  29. No phone, no internet since some time last night. Cause – a broken copper (of course) wire in the pole outside. Many thanks to the lovely chap in Mumbai (or somewhere like that) who helped me out this morning and promised it would be fixed tomorrow. Many more thanks to the wonderful Kevin, who just turned up much earlier than expected and has fixed the problem. As he says, it’s fixed ‘for now’. Someone must have pulled on the kikuyu connection and broken it.

    I have had to rely on Sky News to keep[ up with what’s happening. They have been talking up the Kevin Andrews thing all day as a real challenge to Turnbull’s leadership. Wonderful news, heading into an election which the government hopes to win by saying ‘Malcolm is just so charming’ over and over again.

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