Totally believable spam

Occasionally I open up one of the  e-mails that Google files away in my Spam folder, just to see what’s on offer. This one made me laugh, several times.

Firstly with its claim that “Your Name And Your Contact Details Was Given To This Office”, yet the e-mail is addressed to “Dear Customer” and then goes on to ask me to supply them with my name and contact details and identification documents!

But the biggest laugh is the assertion that my $7.5m USD is sitting unclaimed “Because Of Your Unbelief Of The Reality Of Your Genuine Payment”. Its funny because its true.

The real NRL betting scandal

Tim Simona. Photo by Naparazzi.

Tim Simona is suffering from a drug and gambling addiction, and the NRL has quite rightly deregistered him from playing rugby league.

But the hypocrisy of the NRL is almost excruciating, as it remains silent on its own gambling addiction.

Consulting the website of each of the 16 NRL teams in 2017 shows that 13 of them are sponsored by gambling or betting corporations, the only three clubs not directly sponsored by gambling being the Newcastle Knights, Penrith Panthers, and Canterbury Bulldogs.

Club Sponsored by
Manly Sea Eagles Lottoland
Canberra Raiders tab.com.au
North Queensland Cowboys Ubet
Wests Tigers Crownbet
Sydney Roosters Betting.club
South Sydney Rabbitohs Crown Resorts (Casino), Luxbet
Parramatta Eels Betting.club
Melbourne Storm Crown Resorts (Casino)
New Zealand Warriors SkyCity Casino, TAB NZ
Brisbane Broncos Ladbrokes
Cronulla Sharks Crownbet
St George Illawarra Dragons Ainsworth Game Technology, South Coast Gaming Machines
Gold Coast Titans Ladbrokes

King of the culprits in this infamous list is the Manly Sea Eagles, who, in a move that is in equal parts pernicious and embarrassing, renamed their home ground from “Brookvale Oval” to “Lottoland”.

In 1992 the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act was passed to ban the tobacco industry from sponsoring sport. It’s time that similar legislation is enacted to rid our sporting landscape of the scourge of gambling advertising.

The same drain

Having established with reasonable certainty that Ralph Snowball’s 6 April 1900 drain photo was located in Hamilton North adjacent to the old gasworks site, I visited the spot yesterday to take a modern photo.

Drain construction workers, 6 April 1900. Photo by Ralph Snowball. University of Newcastle, Cultural Collections.

The stormwater drain at Hamilton North, March 2017.

Update – July 2018

Based on some helpful observations from Tony Steinbeck, I now believe that is more likely that the 1900 photo was taken at the site where Chatham Road crosses the drain. See my storm water drain page for further details.

Chatham Rd bridge over the storm water drain in Hamilton North. July 2018.

 

A message for all time

I had a very confusing message notification on my phone this morning, where for a single event the notification contained all three words “yesterday”, “today”, and “tomorrow”.

It took me a while to realise that it was an notification from yesterday about the tomorrow of yesterday, which is today.

Having worked all that out, I did indeed make it to the game today to see the Knights beat the Titans 34 – 26, including a great contribution from Nathan Ross, who scored the match winning try in the 78th minute.  Well done Knights.

Nathan Ross, after the Knights 34-26 win over the Titans.