In all my years living in the backwater of Canberra I never once saw a Segway that vision of the future of human transportation.
But now that I live in the thriving metropolis of Gerroa (pop 498 and not rising even after we moved in) this personal dream has finally been achieved as shown in this photo.
Personally I think the walk might have done her some good.
A bit over a week ago I wrote about the options facing America in this unusually exciting presidential race. I picked up on Chris Hitchens’ admiration of Senator John McCain’s run even though at that point it looked improbable that anyone so principled and decent could succeed, especially with the tide of history apparently running against the Republicans.
The tide of history gets muddy around McCain, he’s marked as a far more bitter opponent of George W Bush than either Hillary or Obama. While those two tear each other apart in increasingly sleazy and petty interchanges (Washington’s child Maureen Dowd carries the latest spat) Frank Rich has been wondering if (as previously noted here) the strange alignment of a twin resurrection of Bill and McCain might create an unexpected path to the White House for the old lion.
Today McCain buried Rudy Guiliani and showed again that he can win in the South.
The photo from his victory celebration speaks volumes. See how he’s holding onto the arm of his wife Cindy who’s actually doing the waving? That’s because he can’t raise his arms over his shoulder after the beatings he took as a prisoner of the Vietnamese.
As a foreign observer it’s hard to not join Hitchens with a lump in the throat and a tear in the eye watching the old lion run. You don’t have to agree with everything he believes to appreciate a decent and intelligent man trying to find the best way forward by his own understanding.
For a brief moment the newly formed US had the runner up as the Vice President in an election. Obama-McCain, McCain-Obama, either seems preferable to the other monsters on offer in this election.
So we’ve been hearing a lot that Kevin is going to apologise to Indigenous Australia.
Indeed that’s what the NY Times headline says
“Australia to Apologize to Aborigines”
And if you were to leave it like that then you’d probably get a warm fuzzy and move on.
The only problem is if you ask: “what are we sorry about?”
Large sections of the population don’t feel very sorry at all and will tell you so at great length. Another large proportion will apologise at near equal length for every defining characteristic of their existence. Not much to make the first Australians feel better about there.
The Prime Minister it seems is going to apologise for the stolen generation. Either a botched child welfare operation or a botched act of genocide depending on your point of view.
And he’s not so sorry that he’s actually going to try and make things right (compensating the victims would be a good start). Absolution without atonement would be on most people’s “nice to have” list but is a rare indulgence.
He’s not sorry for decades of legal inequality, for disparity of disadvantage, or for thuggish murderous police taking indigenous lives to this very day.
He’s certainly not saying sorry for taking this wonderful land from its original inhabitants without any agreement or compensation.
He’s just sorry that an ill-conceived attempt to improve the lot of indigenous children went slightly worse than every other intervention in the lives of native Australians in the last 220 years.
If it makes anyone happy then I suppose it’s worth five minutes of Parliamentary time, but it’s really not much of an apology.
Indulge, if you will, a meme that has floated across my transom.
I thought those of you with audio on your computers might enjoy this offering by the Alaskan parodist known as “James at War“.
Sometimes it’s good to take a look back and try and understand why we either know or care about the young women who saturate our media. The rhymes are a little strained and the style a little reminiscent of Nickleback (unsurprising as this song “popstar” is a lift of that band’s “rockstar”), but on balance I think it’s worth the bandwidth and the 4:19 of your time.
News reports that the ABC, in a flash of creativity, are going to rebrand the TV station known as “The ABC” to most Australians as “ABC1″.
This is to fit in with the digital channels unknown to most Australians, ABC2 and the upcoming kiddies channel ABC3.
It’s great to see the decades old tradition of apeing the BBC still going strong at our national broadcaster. Sure beats having to think for themselves!
The new logo, a teal rectangle with a san-serif font saying, wait for it, “ABC1″ is a real triumph of mediocrity. I for one applaud the ABC for throwing away decades worth of branding in pursuit of a 30 year old BBC strategy.
News reports that 93% of people taking the new citizenship test are passing.
And yet Rudd’s cultural commissars are looking to make changes, it seems questions written by John Howard are to be removed for that reason alone and no other. Don Bradman is set to get the chop as a result.
The snippet of data released on the test makes it look like silly Kiwis and British aren’t doing their homework:
“Failure rates were respectively 0.9 percent for South Africans, 1.0 percent for Indians and 1.9 percent for Filipinos, compared to 2.2 percent for Britons and 2.7 percent for New Zealander”
Now here’s a thing… which group is failling in numbers significantly over 7% to make up an overall 93% pass mark?
The internet is full of pundits trying to assess the legacy of the former Indonesian President Suharto (he only had the one name, apparently that’s common in Java) who proved that only the good die young by shuffling off this mortal coil aged 86 over the weekend.
He was, without doubt, a corrupt dictator capable of significant brutallity and occasional atrocity. But if you’re going to try and do something as improbable as keep the old Dutch East Indian empire together for geo-political convenience then it’s going to take a right bastard to do it.
A nicer man would never have had the chance to do what good he did achieve. That his family became fabulously wealthy in the process and thousands died along the way makes it hard to make further judgment.
NPR have as good coverage as any of the massive thrashing Hillary Clinton took in the South Carolina primary over the weekend.
Bill Clinton has dismissed the result, snidely pointing out that Jesse Jackson won SC twice and never won the nomination.
Yes, that’s right, Bill Clinton, not Hillary. One of the interesting things that has emerged is America’s first co-candidacy.
The NY Times Katharine Q. Seelye has a illuminating story on just how far things have gone with Bill running his own campaign schedule:
“A week ago in Las Vegas, he combed the casinos, pulling out supporters for his wife, one by one, for the Democratic caucuses in Nevada. This past week, ahead of the party’s primary election on Saturday in South Carolina, he hop-scotched across the state, holding back-to-back town-hall-style meetings in which he expounds on public affairs and answers voters’ questions at length.”
Now that he’s got his own media contingent again Bill has been enjoying mouthing off to them, making increasingly nasty attacks on Barack Obama.
News informs us that with the strategy appearing to backfire Hillary is trying to back away from the big dog while making excuses for him:
‘”He loves me just like, you know, husbands and wives get out there and work on each others’ behalf.” She blamed the tensions of the tight battle for the party’s presidential nomination. “Maybe he got a little carried away. You know, that comes with a hard-fought election,” she said. “It also comes with sleep deprivation which, you know, I think is marking all of us, our families, our supporters,” said Senator Clinton, who herself is running low on sleep, as she jets back-and-forth across the country.’
The editorial pages of the NY Times, having just endorsed Hillary for the nomination, are starting to get a little concerned about Billary. Frank Rich opines on the risk that a joint Clinton candidacy throws away any advantages the Democrats might have in an electorate hungry for change.
Well am I the only one who thought this year’s hottest 100 was a bit of a disappointment? Was that really the best 2008 had to offer? I mean none of it was bad (except listing to an hour of Marieke Hardy at the end which was exceptionally painful: “What? Ask people questions? But isn’t it meant to be about ME ME ME???), but where was the excitement? 20 really good songs and so very much filler.
And then the top two separated by just 13 votes (the first time JJJ has actually released any data on the real numbers so hard to get excited about). Muse with “Knights of Cydonia” and Silverchair with “Straight Lines”.
What a pile of wanky proggy crap. The multiple voting JJJ allows has always tended to favour the song everyone likes a little bit and this year it has elevated mediocrity to its highest form.
So how the hell did the poor man’s Queen (with humour removed) make number 1 (and can anyone remember hearing the song get played this year)?
I think a quick look at the video clip might bring the answer.
It’s a SOUNDTRACK to a short film! And kicking in that context!
The most amazing thing for mine is that it’s taken this long, but it must be a bit of a worry for a radio station.
UPDATE: Wikipedia explains another source of the song’s popularity, it features in “Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock”. Also for those who are wondering the video is an original production, not a cut and paste of any earlier film.
The ABC have reportage of Adam Gilchrist’s decision to walk away from test cricket at the end of this summer.
His menace down the bottom of the order will be truly missed by an Australian team not overly blessed with decent men of his calibre off the field.
The pressure will really be mounting on Haydn now next time he has a form dip!
The ever-readable Robert X. Cringely is this week having a look at a host of new technologies arriving, as always, just in time to insure our computers keep getting either twice as fast or twice as cheap every 18 months. In fact he thinks the way is now clear for this to keep happening for the next 15 years.
When every child has gone out and bought their own computer with their pocket money I’m sure Kevin will claim the credit.
The Register has a good early look at what exactly went wrong in Société Générale’s compliance section to allow young Jerome Kerviel to lose €4.9bn (that’s 8.2 Billion in our money).
Perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to allow the guy who’d programmed the risk management software to become a trader in the same system?
While it seems Jerome (currently in parts unknown but one hopes they are warm and the bar is well stocked) hasn’t profited directly from his failed trading you have to wonder if the other sides of the trades, who’ve trousered the cash, couldn’t see their way clear to helping the lad? Or even if they might just have had an understanding with him beforehand? Jerome was obviously a very clever bloke, and yet he made all these stupid trades? Well stranger things have happened…
The London Telegraph has a good but grumpy look at where banking might just be letting the rest of us down these days.
“As a result of America’s mortgage crisis, we have learnt that, to play in banking’s premier league, you need much more than a degree from Harvard Business School, the morals of an alley cat and an unbridled lust for riches. These attributes help, but the sine qua non of a seat at the top table is a willingness to suspend disbelief until junk loans to trailer-dwelling welfare claimants can be diced, sliced, spiced and resold as triple-A securities. This takes some doing, as the business - quite clearly - makes no sense.”
The world’s financial institutions had better be careful, much more of all this and Governments might start to regulate them in very uncomfortable ways.
Well, I didn’t see that one coming. Back when I was running RiotACT we’d regularly bury Canberra publications which popped up, threatened us with irrelevance, and then folded. Now I’ve got a bloody whale parked on my beach and what to say about it?
Last year I actually applied for the position of the Bully’s online editor. They lacked the sense to even interview me.
Today the ABC dances on the grave of a national institution.
The sad thing is idiots proclaiming there is no place in Australia for quality writing when they’ve made no effort to deliver it.
The saddest thing is that the next generation of great Australian writers won’t have a chance to write for The Bulletin and inscribe their name on its ledger.
It always lived with the shame of the long ago masthead “Australia for the white man” never mind it reflected the mood of the time.
And certainly it’s been on the skids since Kerry Packer entered his dotage and was no longer able to crack the editorial whip in search of quality.
A quest by incompetent senior management to find easy answers, things like a tie-in with Newsweek in an era when it’s no longer hard to cover international affairs, did nothing to help.
Personally it was annoying, give me just a tenth of the budget and just see what I could do!
A sign of the failure of imagination is clear in the ABC’s quotes from Laurie Oakes:
“News magazines are battling all around the world. If you follow the media in the US you’ll find that Newsweek and Time have got problems and there’s discussions about what they can do to try and protect their advertising and their circulation. They’re under assault from the internet as The Bulletin was.”
The idea of any news organisation being “under assault” by the internet??? They should be embracing it for gods sake!
And now it’s dead. The paper of Henry Lawson, and Banjo Patterson, and Breaker Morant, and Laurie Oakes and Patrick Cook and John Birmingham.
Hopefully before too long we can see a “New Bulletin”, maybe without the embuggerance of print. Because it would be a shame to lose that heritage forever.
The infamous Sun is warning that Swedish dwarves are getting smuggled into bus luggage holds inside sports bags, there to wreak havoc on the belongings of other bus travelers.
“One woman reported seeing two men squeezing the large, heavy bag into the luggage space under the bus. After arriving she found a camera, purse and other items missing.”
Anyone checking their camera and purse into the hold deserves to have it pilfered by a Swedish dwarf I say.