Bluey's Dad

I smell conspiracy. AFL introduces priority pick system and instructs umpires to ensure Melbourne win against Richmond in order to gain said pick. AFL then ignores calls of 'tanking' while praising the equalising nature of the priority pick system. Makes as much sense as the current investigation. We should hire Adrian Anderson to investigate the AFL I love a good circus. edit - spelling

Thanks guys! That video was amazing, he's nothing like the typical 80's rough and tumble footy player my dad is always going on about. Looks like he would fit right in at elite level today. His evasiveness is extraordinary. I had no idea he was so small though. I wish I'd been old enough to see him play live. Thanks again fellas, much appreciated

There's a lot of love for Robbie here but I was too young in the 80's to really remember him. I was hoping some of you guys could share some Robbie Flower memories so I can bask in the love as well. What was he capable of? What was he like? How awesome was he on a scale of 1 to Chuck Norris? Educate me (and the younger dees)! Thankyou in advance

Dude, Judd would be an awesome PM. Think of the Judd v Abbott budgie smuggler comps. They could have them right now in Parliament and it wouldn't even detract from the current quality of debate. Also, hot first lady (or whatever we call her). Zoo weekly will go nuts.

Lol, it's not the polls I miss. It's the "lol another RR poll" posts that immediately follow one that leave a role hole. I was only a DL lurker when he was around and I still miss the comedy. I think we've gone onto an off-topic tangent from our off-topic tangent. Unless this is a really elaborate meta-commentary on drugs, we should probably stop.

Clearly Brock is running that club...

Sadly I don't think I can continue to make the same arguments using the same words in a different order. Again I'm going to have to start expressing myself in image form. In reference to your post above:

Oh wait, now I get you. Yeah, all threads should be entertaining to Biffen. Definitely make it a forum guidline. Edit: RR to make a poll and see who wants more threads to entertain Biffen?

Exactly. If you don't like it, don't listen. I certainly don't. Blaming a prank call for this suicide is like blaming Marilyn Mansen for the Columbine shootings. Coincidence, nothing more. And those calling for large scale 'axeings' or legislation changes are just giving in to their knee-jerk reactions and prejudices. "I don't approve of their comedy, which was seen in close proximity to a suicide, therefore their comedy caused this suicide. By extension, this will also cause the downfall of society," - this is complete folly and shows deep flaws in reasoning. As I said, even if there was a causal relationship, one incident among thousands is hardly an appropriate sample size on which to base such drastic changes as has been advocated here. At best, you could propose an investigation to see if this has happened before in less visible circumstances. If that investigation showed that it had, and in statistically significant quantities, then I'll jump right on the "let's change the law" bandwagon. But I don't think we should make snap decisions without all the available evidence - and at the moment that evidence is looking real dicey. I am happy to revisit if a causal relationship is established by the authorities. I'm getting pretty tired of repeating myself. If nothing else though, this thread has entertained Biffen. And in the end, isn't that the real aim of all of us here at Demonland?

Sorry, having read that 2Day FM's lawyers had signed off on the broadcast 2 days after the recording, I would have assumed that she would have given her permission. If this isn't the case, then obviously they are in a lot of poo. There's that long bow again. Your argument only holds merit if prank calls are THE ONLY source of entertainment and political satire. That's obviously not the case. There are plenty of examples of good satire and criticism of government/society etc. Try again please. Also, "old-fashioned" does not necessarily mean better. Sometimes that is the case, sometimes it is not. You (or dee-luded, can't remember which), stated before about the need for society to change and put forward slavery as one example. Surely you wouldn't adhere to this "old-fashioned" idea? Prank calls aren't taking the place of anything. They're not pushing aside some high minded political commentary. They're played on stations aimed largely at the youth market, where political commentary doesn't get any ratings and therefore wouldn't be played anyway. I would argue that there is more 'space' then there used to be with the advent of new technologies. Maybe 50 years ago when there were less radio stations, a prank call might take away time from something more important. But now, all you have to do is change the dial and very quickly you can find something else more 'valuable'. Those crying out for significant societal change on the back on an UNSUBSTANTIATED LINK between prank calls and ONE death (a statistically insignificant amount) are making knee-jerk reactions that I think damage society in a far worse way.

Well at least we agree on that, although I wish it wasn't the case. I'm not sure how prank calls are evidence of society's degeneration though. There are far worse things about our culture that I'd sooner remove than that. That's essentially my point - prank calls aren't that bad when compared with all the other issues we face. My life is fine, thanks for your concern. The last piece of official introspection I did was some very extensive personality profiling done as part of a job interview process. The results aligned almost exactly with the expectations I had laid out at the start of the day, which is something the assessor said was very rare. I'm very much ok with myself - I know who I am. Unofficial and unstructured introspection takes place every morning in the shower - the best place for thinking about life . I don't really have anything more to contribute that's actually on-topic so I might just shut up.

I'm not arguing against all change. I'm arguing against changing things so low on our list of priorities that we shouldn't even be debating it, especially when WE STILL HAVE NO PROOF THAT THE TWO INCIDENTS ARE RELATED.

Mate, you need to work on your reading comprehension. 1 - I never said that finances take priority over social issues. I said there are other issues that should take priority before prank calls. Some of those may be social, some economic. I did not specify. Your assumption that I inferred that financial issues are more important than social ones is flawed. 2 - I said 'entertaining', not 'educated'. Who educated you? 3 - There was no need to personal attacks, nowhere in any of my posts did I attack anyone. In fact, we had a constructive dialogue before you decided to post your travesty above. 4 - I'm struggling to understand your last section, in red. You seem to think this suicide is some sort of social turning point? Something we should all rally around for societal change like Rosa Parks? I've already said that the issue is just not that important. If you'd like to discuss these issues in a clam and reasonable matter, I'd be more than happy to engage with you. If you're just going to attack my attitude and spew out nonsensical politicised crap then I'm just going to ignore it. Contribute like a grown-up or take your bat and ball and go home.

"Immaturity is not illegal." "No, but it is pitiful. And it can be culpable." True, but there's a line. I think prank calls sit firmly on the 'pitiful but not culpable' side, unless the contents of that call are intentionally hostile, hateful or done with intention to cause harm. In that case, there are already laws to cover those acts. A prank call specific law is not necessary. You may be right about the roots of both behaviours. I've had very few exposures to drugs in my life so can't say for sure. After that you kind of lost me, not sure how they both relate. I don't think the nature/nurture debate has anything to do with Karma, since I very much doubt Karma exists in any form. Maybe a mod could split the threads?

That's quite a long bow to draw there. Slavery was a huge economic and social issue and effected millions of people. Prank calling is an often-times crass form of entertainment. I see no commonality that would allow you to draw this parallel. In fact, if anything, it shows that we have more important things to think about than pranks calls that may or may not have one time caused someone to commit suicide. It's just nowhere near the top of the legislative to-do list. If it were, we would be living in a country with profoundly screwed up priorities. And to be honest, if someone waved a magic wand and solved all our other problems, I still would argue against legislating against prank calls because it would give rise to too many issues regarding the curtailing of free speech. Prank calls are not hate-speech, let's be reasonable here. It's an immature form of entertainment that largely leaves no lasting damage. If stupid people want to entertain other stupid people by making prank calls then who cares? I think if anything the media is the most guilty here for the disproportionate amount of air time the original prank received and the subsequent commentary on the POSSIBLE link to a suicide. This may just all be a coincidence, and we are spinning into a frenzy because of the proximity of 'event a' and 'event b', even though there was no causal or correlative relationship. Calling for the broadcaster's blood or demanding we legislate does not solve anything. It just blows the issue out of all proportion. One death does not make an adequate sample size for sweeping legislative change.

Isn't the Matt & Jo Show Melbourne based? Matt have been doing regular prank calls for the last 10 years. Although they are owned by 2Day, that team is Melbourne based isn't it?

Immaturity is not illegal. There must have been thousands, if not more, of these sorts of prank calls made since the development of the modern radio show. This is the first I've ever heard of one resulting in a death (if that's the case, no one has actually made a causal link yet between the call and the suicide). It might have been in bad taste, but I think there's a lot of overreacting going on. People choke on novelty toothpicks but no one's trying to get them pulled from shelves of supermarkets. If this nurse killed herself as a result of the prank, I doubt that it was the prank alone that did it. I would suggest that there were likely other issues at play. If it were me, I'd be less worried about the prank and more worried about the constant media attention. Maybe that's where some of the blame should lie if we are to assign blame at all. What are we going to do? Make a law preventing prank calls? Sounds like a very slippery slope to me, and there are much larger issues society and lawmakers could be dealing with. I don't mean to sound crass nor insensitive, I just think we need a little perspective here.

10/10

Fanfooty has a dt 2013 planning tool. It's not 100% accurate but it's interesting to play with. Choke's Early Team Fanplanner squad in the Dream Team competition coached by <b>Choke</b>. Salary cap left: $0. Brendon Goddard, Jack Grimes, Matt Suckling, Cameron Pedersen, Daniel Talia, Dale Morris Sam Docherty, Tom Clurey Dane Swan, Gary Ablett jnr, Scott Pendlebury, Bryce Gibbs, Luke Ball, Robbie Gray, Brad Crouch, Jaeger O'Meara Dean Kent, Jack Viney Shane Mumford, Matthew Leuenberger Joe Daniher, Brodie Grundy Matthew Pavlich, Tom Rockliff, Travis Cloke, Mark LeCras, Lance Franklin, Dean Cox Troy Menzel, Jake Stringer A lot can happen from now until the season starts, Menzel especially is on thin ice on my team. Dean Cox as F/R and Tom Rockliff as F/M is a huge bonus, I think they were announced on twitter a few weeks ago. I have also assumed Daniher will be R/F. If not, he'll probably replace Menzel in the forward bench. Kind of fun to play around with though. edit - bbcode

Thanks H_T, will check it out

Could use a button making tool? Google search netted this, looks pretty good: http://css-tricks.com/examples/ButtonMaker/#

Interesting approach from Portugal. From Wikipedia: The drug policy of Portugal was put in place in 2000, and was legally effective from July 2001. The new law maintained the status of illegality for using or possessing any drug for personal use without authorization. However, the offense was changed from a criminal one, with prison a possible punishment, to an administrative one if the amount possessed was no more than ten days' supply of that substance.[1] In 1999, Portugal had the highest rate of HIV amongst injecting drug users in the European Union. The number of newly diagnosed HIV cases among drug users has decreased to 13.4 cases per million in 2009 but that is still high above the European average, at 2.85 cases per million.[1] There are, however, statistical indicators that suggest the following correlations between the drug strategy and the following developments, from July 2001 up to 2007: Increased uptake of treatment.[8] Reduction in HIV diagnoses amongst drug users by 17%[14] Reduction in drug related deaths, although this reduction has decreased in later years, and the number of drug related deaths is now almost on the same level as before the Drug strategy was implemented.[8][14] However, this may be accounted for by improvement in measurement practices, which includes a doubling of toxicological autopsies now being performed, meaning that more drugs related deaths are likely to be recorded.[15] Reported lifetime use of "all illicit drugs" increased from 7.8% to 12%, lifetime use of cannabis increased from 7.6% to 11.7%, cocaine use more than doubled, from 0.9% to 1.9%, ecstasy nearly doubled from 0.7% to 1.3%, and heroin increased from 0.7% to 1.1%[14] It has been proposed that this effect may have been related to the candor of interviewees, who may have been inclined to answer more truthfully due to a reduction in the stigma associated with drug use.[15] However, during the same period, the use of heroin and cannabis also increased in Spain and Italy, where drugs for personal use was decriminalised many years earlier than in Portugal [15][16] while the use of Cannabis and heroin decreased in the rest of Western Europe.[17][18] Drug use among adolescents (13-15 yrs) and "problematic" users declined.[15] Drug-related criminal justice workloads decreased [15] Decreased street value of most illicit drugs, some significantly.[15] Full article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal The really interesting thing to me about the policy is that when a user is found, they are fined and required to attend drug counselling. The fines the offenders pay pays for the administration of the drug counselling centres. It repositions users as victims, not as criminals - which I think is really important. The drugs are still illegal, so the dealers can still be arrested and prosecuted, but the users/victims get the support they need.

Hell yeah. His cameo in Stargate Atlantis was pretty great too

Tony Abbott. The way he stares into the future, as if he sees something I cannot. While wearing budgie smugglers. That man is all class. Again thanks for those who posted the smiling images. Happy to admit I was wrong - I had not seen any of them before now. Can't wait to see Jesse play Plus, he's living with Mitch. If I were living with Mitch, the man would have to sleep with an eye patch on his butthole. I would legitimately turn gay for that man. My wife is ok with this, and when my son is old enough to understand, I'm sure he will too.