Archive for March, 2007

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Shopping on teh interwebz

30 Mar 2007

Was on the hunt yesterday evening for some geeky bits to upgrade my home-made blogpod when I came across one online retailer that had a good price. Went through their ordering rigmarole, but they didn’t take a credit card number and they said they’d contact me.

Two hours later, they emailed me asking me to fax them a copy of both sides of my driver’s licence and credit card to confirm payment.

Uh . . . no.

I mean, first of all, I ain’t going to send some random computer joint enough details about myself for them to start getting into some serious identity fraud just to get a good price on a stick of printed circuit board.

And by the time they got back to me, I’d already found another place that had a cheaper price and was happy to take my money.

See, apparently there’s this high-tech computery thing called the intertubes where you can pay for stuff online and they send it to you. Who’d have thunk it?

Posted in money, nerds, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Newsflash: journalist found to be self important

29 Mar 2007

Having been a journalist in the past, I think I’m fairly qualified to comment on how far up their own arses many journalists’ heads are. And the answer to that is, very, very far.

Today’s shocking story begins when Wired journalist Fred Vogelstein was in the process of writing a fairly long-winded and detail-heavy story on Microsoft’s attitude to transparency in dealing with the media and the public. Due to an email stuff-up, one of Microsoft’s PR chaps accidentally forwarded Vogelstein the “secret dossier” that Microsoft kept on him. So flummoxed by this was Vogelstein, he posted about it in his blog and published the offending document in full. The ensuing bad publicity drove Waggener Edstrom President Frank Shaw to publish a defence in his blog.

Vogelstein makes out that the entire 5,500 words was all dirt on him. In truth, the majority of the 13-page document is a bunch of forwarded emails and discussion of key messages and expected questions, the sort of research any good PR company would do for a major client facing an important interview. Especially a company as obsessed with spin and media perceptions as Microsoft.

Perhaps half a page is devoted to Fred himself and contains such wow-scary revelations as: Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in marketroids, media, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Blogs are dead

26 Mar 2007

This is not, as you might think, because people are beginning to realise that the so-called democratisation of the Internet means the voices of professionals and experts are drowned out by a dictatorship of idiots or because “99% of the ‘blogosphere’ is rubbish created by idiots” but because pea-brained, crotch-flashing celebrities lack the self-discipline to narcissise regularly. (”Narcissise” is not real word, but it seems more appropriate than “blog” or “post”.) And if celebrities can’t do it, who can? Apparently, the readers of The Australian, who seem unaware of the irony in responding to this ridiculous trollery.

Posted in damned lies and statistics, media, techno-wankery | No Comments »

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Everyone’s a Little Bit Jewish

23 Mar 2007


At a recent(ish) Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS concert, the casts of Avenue Q and Fiddler on the Roof got together in a fine example of the “replace regular words with Jewish words for humorous effect” school of comedy. ‘You live on Avenue Q’ becomes ‘You shlep/kvetch on Avenue Jew’. Hilarious!

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, music, wordy things | No Comments »

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The drought of Howard

18 Mar 2007

Apologies for getting all biblical, but a stint visiting Ma and Pa Vealmince tends to put me in this frame of mind.

The elder Vealminces, ordinarily the most liberal, egalitarian folk, have of late turned to the right on issues of national security and hold some fairly un-PC views about Muslims. As a result they tend to support the Howard Government’s tough-on-immigration stance of keeping ‘undersirable’ people who ‘don’t share Australian values’ out of the country. If we let too many of ‘those people’ in, the argument goes, it will change the character of society.

Liberal lefty types like me argue this is one of Howard’s true evils: that in a time when he could have led his people to be more compassionate and generous, he instead appealed to their xenophobia and self interest.

I would not have thought it necessary to remind Ma and Pa Vealmince that people in Australia were arguing a lot of the same things in the late 40s when the issue was whether or not to let in a bunch of refugees from Europe, among them my grandparents and their infant children. It was feared they would change the character of society. Which they definitely did, and few people would argue for the worse.

But having put things in this context, the folks were - to their credit - chastened.

“That’s why we have the drought now,” Pa Vealmince concluded. “Because we have turned away from our values and become selfish and mean.” Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in filthy kike propaganda, politics | 1 Comment »

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I’d like my $20 billion back

13 Mar 2007

The inefficiency, duplication and buck-passing of having federal and state governments in Australia cost $9 billion a year, according to a conservative estimate by the Business Council of Australia, which is really more like $20 billion a year according to a less conservative George Williams.

That’s 9% of government spending and 3% of GDP. That’s around $2,400 per family. That’s a lot

We face a choice. The first option is to continue to pay extra tax and accept second-rate government services. We have been led in this direction by generations of politicians who have found it easier to leave the system as is rather than take up the challenge of reform.

A reason for this is that the present system benefits those in power.

Just a reason? You’re far too generous, Prof.

There is a deafening absence of rhetoric from either major party on any serious reform. Or minor party, come to think of it, unless you count this bloke, who aims to start abolishing the state governments by running for the NSW upper house. Riiiight . . . the idea being he’s going to reform the system of overgovernment that benefits those in power by joining those in power in the tier of government he says we don’t need.

Why didn’t I think of that?

Posted in damned lies and statistics, money, politics | No Comments »

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The big 5,000

12 Mar 2007

Some time this morning, the hit counter ticked over the 5,000 mark. Especially since it has been more than a year since I switched over to WordPress, this is a remarkably small and unimpressive number of page views of which to be proud. An average of 12.6 a day. But I am proud anyway.

What it is that has gained me such worldwide notoriety and fame? Is it my intelligent and iconoclastic analyses of Australian politics, media and gender relations? My wry and dark humour? My wit and compassion?

Nah.

Presenting this blog’s three most popular posts: Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in damned lies and statistics, techno-wankery | 1 Comment »

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Shannon Noll and Natalie Bassingthwaighte must die

11 Mar 2007

I was forced listen to this on the radio while in the queue at the supermarket. Imagine the hubris, the chutzpah of two Australian nobodies trying to cover a Peter Gabriel-Kate Bush duet.

Then imagine just how badly they murdered it, like the talentless, clueless Z-listers they are.

Then imagine them dying slowly and painfully on top of a fire made of all the CDs ever manufactured of this abomination and all the iPods that ever had it stored in them.

Ah, that’s better.

Posted in music, violence | 9 Comments »

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Pot calling the kettle a science fraud

11 Mar 2007

Erin Brockovich - the real one, not Julia Roberts - is in town at the invitation of the Climate Change Coalition to raise the profile of said party ahead of its run for the NSW upper house in the upcoming election.

But wait . . . isn’t there a party called, I dunno, The Greens or something that has a fairly strong platform on global warming and stuff? Ah, but it turns out the Greens have sold out to The Man. Or something.

And, having helped win a class-action suit against an energy company for poisoning the groundwater near a power station, Brockovich’s qualifications as a global warming spokesperson are . . . ? Oh, I see, energy companies cause global warming, Erin Brockovich hates energy companies . . . gotcha. Or as the great woman herself puts it:

I am absolutely convinced there is a link between environmental destruction and global warming . . . If mother Earth dies we all die. My purpose is to come to Australia and create greater awareness that individuals can make a difference.

OK, so convincing arguments may not be her thing, but that doesn’t excuse the Herald’s resident enviro-sceptic Michael Duffy for taking the opportunity to do a bit of Brockovich character assassination. He starts out by mentioning that Brockovich and her employers made a fair whack of moolah out of the class action suit against Pacific Gas and Electric, obviously implying her motive was profit, not a genuine concern for the cancer-riddled folks of Hinkley, California. Read the rest of this entry ?

Posted in damned lies and statistics, media, science | No Comments »

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It’s off to work I go (more than five minutes late)

9 Mar 2007

The SMH reports Sydney buses are “slow, unpredictable and far less reliable than official figures claim”, touting the story on its website front page with the headline “bus shock”. I don’t think anyone who catches buses regularly would be in the least bit shocked.

Still, you have to wonder about the Herald’s methodology - sitting for an hour, in the late morning after the peak, at five different bus stops and counting the number of buses that were more than five minutes late.

The article cites the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal criticising the way the State Transit Authority measures punctuality. But at least it has more statistical integrity than the Herald’s little exercise, which seems to have been deliberately calculated - by choosing the busiest roads and the off-peak periods - to get the worst possible result.

But at least someone in this benighted election is talking about public transport, unlike either of the major parties. Labor knows it’s bad and the Libs know they can’t fix it. Ho hum.

Posted in Sydney, damned lies and statistics, media, politics | No Comments »

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