Compassionate retailing CEO Gerry Harvey on charity for the poor:
RETAILING billionaire Gerry Harvey has lamented that Australian charity is being wasted on "no-hopers".
Asked in a new book about his community role, Mr Harvey said giving to people who "are not putting anything back into the community" is like "helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason". Read more »
I know we can't hear each other, but the comment thing is being worked on. And it will be solved, and all will be as it once was, very soon. Read more »
I admire vegetarians. (Those who would like to eat meat but don't for ethical reasons, anyway.) I feel guilty every time I start gnawing on the flesh of an animal, killed in the prime of its life in order that I might enjoy something tasty (and not have to rely on iron supplements). I know that meat is an inefficient way of providing food, responsible for both environmental devastation (rainforests cleared to graze cattle) and starvation in the third world (crops being used to farm animals rather than humans). Read more »
According to News Ltd, "The Australian Sex Party" will be launching this week, with a platform that includes:
...a national sex education curriculum, reducing censorship, abolishing the government's proposed internet filter and supporting gay marriage. Read more »
I'm torn between hoping that Liberal Party spokesman Malcolm and hangers-on like Flinty continue to bang on about the "did Rudd leak that George Bush said something stupid?" story, since no-one cares and their being distracted by a non-issue keeps the risk of them regaining power any time soon at a bare minimum - and fearing that if their stupidity continues, in the meantime we Read more »
Well, if anyone was concerned that Senator Stephen Conroy might really be a serious and honest man genuinely trying to protect children from harm, and not a sneaky cynic merely using the magic words "child pornography" to avoid revealing the full extent of what he's actually planning to censor from the internet, the following exchange in the Senate yesterday might dispel those fears: Read more »
The mob has always demanded violent punishments for villains (however defined in that time period). It's why they cheered at the brutality of the Colosseum. It's why they burned witches. It's why they dug up Oliver Cromwell's corpse and dismembered it. Read more »
Sorry about this - something's gone horribly wrong with Haloscan and it looks like it's holding comments and then deleting them. If you've tried to post a comment and it's disappeared, please let me know via email.
At least when they fracked up Facebook it didn't cripple the blog.
So Tim Dunlop's classic progressive Australian blog, The Road to Surfdom, has come to a lamented end of the road.
Joining many other favourite sites that have shut up shop since Rudd won in 2007. Shrinking the blogroll at right even further. Read more »
A few words of advice to US Republicans, if I may, as they come to terms with their crushing defeat at the hands of an angry American electorate: don't listen to those voters! They don't know what they want. When they elected a candidate as far away from hawks like Bush and creationists like Palin as available under your broken electoral system, clearly what they were crying out for was an even more right-wing candidate than either of those two. McCain did his best, but he clearly wasn't anywhere near hardline enough. Read more »
The victory* of the anti-gay bigots in California in their constitutional amendment to "defend traditional marriage" by taking it away from gays, casts a real pall over Obama's victory yesterday. As Andrew Sullivan (a gay conservative who recently declared his support for Obama) writes: Read more »
Well, that's a relief. I was worried that the crushing rejection by (the small proportion of voting) Americans of Republicans like me might mean a reprieve from right-wing social and economic approaches to government. But maybe not:
Invoking one of his heroes, Civil War president Abraham Lincoln, Mr Obama reached out to defeated Republicans, calling for unity in the country and an end to division. Read more »
It's that time of year again... that glorious opportunity for the nation's hacks to break out the special-occasion ridiculous hyperbole over a bloody horse race. Can they measure up to previous years' efforts? Can they surpass them? Who will win the 2008 Melbourne Horce Racing Hyperbole Cup?
Let's start with The Age:
Of course, the cup is more than a horse race. Read more »
At one point in recent major release for the Xbox 360, Fable 2, the player finds himself wandering around town trying to find a date for a bloke named "Rupert"* who, despite his father's efforts, isn't particularly interested in women (in that way). Read more »
I can't believe I've done it again. After Optus, and Telstra, and Three, and AAPT, and TPG, I thought that the new telecommunicatons company in my life would treat me right. I thought I'd found The One. Read more »
I was deeply saddened to read at GrodsCorp about The Age's dire lack of newsroom staff, as evidenced by the following piece of desperation published today:
In fact I felt so bad for the newspaper I used to purchase that I thought I'd help them out with some new material for scoop@theage.com.au:
Dear The Age, Read more »
It always amazes me that people can read a clearly one-sided newspaper article and not even realise that they haven't heard from the other side at all. Not even notice the absence of it.
Take today's miserably spiteful "Greens hate football clubs" effort. Read more »
More on the Fielding-Conroy Fundy Internet Filter*:
Despite this, and significant opposition from ISPs, the Government will soon seek expressions of interest from telcos seeking to be part of a live trial of the filters.
Memo my ISP: participating in this pile of coogee from the Steves is a deal-breaker. Don't even think about it.
*We need to come up with a catchy name for it. Suggestions welcome in the comments.
I'm sure everyone reading this blog (particularly from NSW) is already aware of the famous Coogee Bay "shit sundae" incident, in which a complaining customer allegedly had something a little extra frozen in with her complimentary ice cream. (Or, as the Tele likes to call it, "poo cream".) Read more »
Can I tell you a secret? Promise you won't pass it on? Excellent. Then only you, and I, and the entire Google-using world will know...
Here it is: for the last three years I've been dying out the grey hairs. (Is there anyone more vain than a lefty lawyer?) Rather than enduring a salt-and-pepper look at my age (THIRTY TWO, DAMMIT), every couple of months the old head carpet is given a bit of colour-related chemical-based assistance. Just a little, mind you - it's not like I need the help all that much.
Well, I thought. Read more »
If you've been into a Magistrates' Court in Victoria over the last few weeks - or even somewhere around the block from one, where the queues start - you may have noticed that they've implemented a new security screening system. It's made its way to Melbourne now and will be in all Victorian courts before long. This new system involves more sensitive scanning booths and some new directives as to what checks security staff are to make of every single person entering the building. Read more »
Hang on - we do this? Australia withdraws foreign aid from any organisation that also provides women with abortion advice?
When did this happen? Ah, it was a Howard deal to buy off the pre-Fielding Senate fundamentalist, Harradine. Read more »
John McCain is apparently outraged that the New York Times has dared to write a not entirely hagiographic article about his wife, just as she was being more prominently utilised by his campaign to try to shore up support for his beleaguered tilt at the White House. Read more »
This is how a cat shares the space in front of a heater:
You can sit off to the side if you like. Just don't block any of the heat. MY heat. Read more »
The Age travel writer used to have sympathy for smokers, but not after travelling through Europe recently. Why is that familiar? Read more »
Dear Windows XP
That's lovely that updating my computer is almost complete. I understand your message that I must restart my computer for the updates to take effect. And I appreciate that, therefore, you'd like me to restart my computer now. But I WILL REBOOT THE COMPUTER WHEN I FRICKING FEEL LIKE IT. That's what selecting "Restart later" means.
So stop nagging me!
Your updates are not more important than whatever else it is that I'm doing. You can damn well wait. Who's in charge here, me or you? No, it's me. Read more »
Here we have, courtesy of Tony Abbott, the conservatives' problem with modern history teaching, in a nutshell:
"I think (the curriculum) needs to be history that pays credit where it's due."
It should be, in other words, about praising the goodies and damning the baddies. Read more »
Well, at least we know what Alexander Downer was doing in our parliament all those years - training to be an advisor to corporate schemers wanting to know the best way to play governments and their ministers into giving them what they want. Read more »
You know how Dubai is always boasting about its fantastic new facilities - enormous ski resorts in the desert, islands in the shape of palm trees, spectacular leisure parks - and amazing new economy in the middle east? Ever thought there must be something fishy going on? There is, as this article in today's Age reminds us.
It's an economy built not just on oil but, more disturbingly, on slavery. On appalling, inhuman exploitation of the poor. On outright lies and deceit. Read more »
Here's the thing about encouraging people to come back to your blog - you need to write new content regularly. Or have such awesome content that people will forward it to other people and you get repeat visitors that way. Obviously I'm incapable of the latter, so I try to update a new post at least once a day. Read more »
This is the most outrageous thing I've chosen to be outraged by today:
A BRISBANE council has ordered an ex-soldier to take down the Australian flag outside his house because a neighbour says it is "offensive". Read more »
A new nomination for Worst Opening Sentence Of 2008, in the Hun's story on the US Presidential debate:
WITH their dislike on display, tensions boiled beneath the surface during the second US presidential debate but there were no body blows.
That's fantastic work. On display beneath the surface, eh? And the mixed metaphors... I have tears in my eyes.
Stefanie Balogh, I salute you.
Yesterday I called on the Victorian media to do everything they can to completely ignore the Greens' terrifyingly non-terrifying $13.7 public transport plan for Melbourne. I warned that if people heard about the first serious expansion of this vital infrastructure since the City Loop was built in the eighties, they might do something crazy like vote for it. Read more »
On looking at the Greens' new public transport policy for Melbourne, my first reaction, obviously, was - where are the bloody freeways? You're spending $13.7 billion on new rail, tram and bus infrastructure and no major new tollway in sight? Read more »
Today in the technology section of News.com.au:
The latest addition to the cyber vocabulary is "flaming" - a form of online verbal abuse using capital letters to express aggression.
In other news - apparently they have the "internet" on "computers" now. Read more »
Those new, huge Qantas planes certainly look like they're making good use of the extra space:
Barrister Peter Faris exposes our secret agenda:
I'm perfectly comfortable with [the anti-terror laws], as are 99% of Australians, certainly all right-thinking Australians. So this is a non-issue, this is a non-debate. These are complaints by the disgruntled lawyers whose clients were convicted, and/or the left wing and their campaign really in support of terror and against Australians' rights not to be murdered. Read more »
And fair enough too.
American market players screw up the US economy and Victoria can't build a new rail line. Of course!
What's that you say? We could eschew the present mob's love affair with "public private partnerships" and just build the damn thing ourselves? With public money? WITH PUBLIC MONEY?!!
I've never heard of anything so outrageous. Tax money being spent on necessary public infrastructure? What kind of radical communist would propose such a thing? How are our corporate friends to eke out a profit margin if we stop giving them these deals? Read more »
I'm sick of the anti-Palin forces treating her as some kind of sexualised bimbo. Read more »
If you see teenagers shuffling sadly along the footpaths today looking lost, squinting in terror at the sun, and shivering uncontrollably - don't worry. It's not the apocalypse, it's not the rise of the zombies, and they're not junkies craving a fix.
It's just that Microsoft's X-Box Live is down for 24 hours for some kind of maintenance.
In the middle of the school holidays.
Pity these lost souls. They need your compassion on this dark day.
Typical moral cowardice from the world's newspapers today, declaring the US Presidential Debate held over the weekend "too close to call".
What absolute garbage! My candidate won easily. Read more »
Fighting with all that html has left me exhausted and unable to write an actual post - one on an actual interesting issue, I mean - but we're back. Disqus is working. Haloscan is gone. This blog has survived.
Now I just have to go and buy a new phone (my N95 died yesterday) and I'll pretty much be back to where I was last week.
Now comments aren't working at all.
I am trying to install disqus commenting, but because this template is one of the old blogger ones, the automatic BlogSpot install doesn't work and I have to past a generic bit of code somewhere in the middle of it. I can figure out where to put the "View comments" and the "Recent Comments" code - I just can't figure out where to put this: Read more »
Who'd have thought it would last this long without common sense prevailing, and the whole enterprise being abandoned? What a testament to bloody-minded self-involved introspection (look at my cat!) and arrogant presumption (listen to me!). And the over-use of hyphens.
I'm both proud and ashamed.
Bigots and oppressors of past ages - those who defended slavery, opposed women having the vote, or resisted equal rights for black people, for example - are often excused on the grounds of "that's just the way people were back then". That we shouldn't judge the actions of people in the past by the standards of modern sensibilities - as if the words "equality" and "fairness" were invented just recently. That if bigotry is widespread, then you can't really blame people for playing along with it - or, indeed, for trying to spread it further. Read more »
It has been suggested that this blog can be a little negative when discussing politics. Not so much that it's never encountered a political story that it didn't like - more that it's difficult to imagine when it noticed one that it genuinely did.
There are two reasons for this. Read more »
Meanwhile, what's the official "Opposition" doing? It's banging on about that leak of a phone call between Rudd and Bush which it argues damaged relations between Australia and the (soon to be replaced) Bush White House.
Ooooooh! Um-arrr! Read more »
The mob has always demanded violent punishments for villains (however defined in that time period). It's why they cheered at the brutality of the Colosseum. It's why they burned witches. It's why they dug up Oliver Cromwell's corpse and dismembered it. Read more »
This video of SA Attorney General Michael Atkinson on ABC's Stateline, in which he tries to defend his opposition to ensuring violent videogames are only played by adults, reveals just what a raving idiot he is: Read more »
Sorry about this - something's gone horribly wrong with Haloscan (which appears to have been taken over by a new company dedicated to destroying it) and it looks like it's holding comments and then deleting them. (And not just to me.)
If you've tried to post a comment and it's disappeared, please let me know via email. Read more »
Having incurred the wrath of tens of thousands of stranded Melburnians when the Flemington line which it has refused to upgrade (crowded because of Oaks Day) shut down during peak hour yesterday afternoon, prompting some on stationary trains to get out and walk along the tracks, Connex was quick to but the blame where it belongs: Read more »
A few words of advice to US Republicans, if I may, as they come to terms with their crushing defeat at the hands of an angry American electorate: don't listen to those voters! They don't know what they want. When they elected a candidate as far away from hawks like Bush and creationists like Palin as available under your broken electoral system, clearly what they were crying out for was an even more right-wing candidate than either of those two. McCain did his best, but he clearly wasn't anywhere near hardline enough. Read more »
A week after the Victorian ALP government buried material they had to release but didn't want scrutinised too closely by releasing 200 reports all at once, the federal ALP chooses to announce a $40 billion budget hole on a day in which there was no major news story that could drown it out whatsoever. Read more »
I found myself turning up Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A Changin'" today, and feeling something akin to a sense of hope and optimism at how fantastic it would be if Barack Obama were to win the US presidency tomorrow (Australian time, tim). Read more »
News Ltd tries to make its readers feel a little better about the fact that the value of their income and savings has plummeted with the Australian dollar: Read more »
Perusing this creepy array of vintage military equipment magazine advertisements, the thought occurred to me: there's effectively no limit to what these guys can promise, is there? Read more »
Further to my post on the subject the other day, I present the Hun's most compelling evidence yet that our courts are "soft on crime" - they're acquitting innocent people: Read more »
Sure, universities used to be able to survive on the money from students funded by government, rather than rich parents paying for their kids to jump the queue*. But not any more! Not now that, thanks to the previous government, they've had a taste of that sweet, sweet, rich kid goodness:
UNIVERSITIES are being short-changed millions of dollars by the Federal Government's decision to abolish full-fees for Australian students. Read more »
In some spectacularly balanced and fair coverage today, News Ltd is accusing the Greens of TRYING TO KILL THE WESTERN BULLDOGS AFL team:
THE Western Bulldogs' future is under threat after the Greens moved to block approval of the club's redevelopment of Whitten Oval...
Planning Minister Justin Madden seized control from the council in July, saying the club’s future was at stake. Read more »
Actually, they don't. And I'd much rather endure gangs of youths hanging around the stations than the appalling lift-music renditions of easy-listening classics (a brass version of "Stop! In the name of love" this morning, for example) being forced on me while I wait for the train. (It's even worse than the tinny recordings of obscure and forgettable classical music they used to use.)
Are obnoxious teenagers really worse than that?
Really, The Age? Kirsty Hinze is literally in love with - and going to marry - her actual grandfather?!! Ew-wwwwww.
I'm not going to harp on Stephen Conroy's ironic attempt to silence critics by complaining to their employers, because everyone and their (implausibly internet-capable) dog has done that already. Read more »
Oh, for pete sake - get over yourselves.
One of the biggest game releases of the year has been delayed because music lyrics in a background song could have caused offense to Muslim players.
Sony is now hastily recalling all copies of LittleBigPlanet that had been sent to retailers and manufacturing new discs of the PlayStation 3 blockbuster with the offending music track removed. Read more »
At least if Iraq gets worse again we have someone we'll be happy to blame. Colin fricking Powell. It's all Colin fricking Powell's fault! Remember, he's the one we got to sell the war to you lot. And since nothing we stuff up is our fault, the buck has to stop with someone who was once but is no longer one of us. And Colin Powell is definitely no longer one of us. Read more »
I think it's a wonderful thing for governments to curb freedom as much as possible. That's why I've always been such a huge fan of the plan by both Australian major parties to automatically block internet content they'd rather we didn't see with mandatory ISP-level filters. You know, to protect the kiddehs. Because only by implementing a Chinese-style Great Firewall Of Australia will we be able to save them from child pornography and rude words. And not a moment too soon! Read more »
Here's another reason not to run for public office or otherwise draw the attention of news media - all you have to do is pull a slightly silly face for a fraction of a second and, well...
Okay, I like receiving praise. I love it. I thrive on it. Say you enjoyed something I've written, or that you're thrilled by a spectacular bit of advocacy I've just done for you in court, or that my hair looks marginally less ridiculous this morning than usual, and you'll have brightened my day considerably. (If you're trying to make me miserable, on the other hand, and I can't emphasise this enough, don't start off with a genuine, heart-felt compliment. How did you even think that was going to work? Honestly, you must be some kind of silly person.) Read more »
I have a few friends who are, like me, divorced or separated. (Yes, we roam in packs, drinking lattes* and destroying the institution of marriage.) And it turns out that something I experienced last year during that thoroughly enjoyable time isn't, as someone with an ounce of compassion might have assumed, in fact unique. And that is people who have nothing to do with the matter using it as a ground to attack you. Read more »
When we Republicans say "spending freeze", we mean cutting spending on, you know, poor people and shit. Read more »
Watching this video (in which a group of hilarious political geniuses send up black voters by ascribing their summary of McCain's policies to Obama and then getting those voters to say they'd vote for them - oh ho ho, how devilishly ingenious and completely unlikely to succeed if the reverse were tried in McCain territory), I was struck by the discovery that apparently only Republicans are "pro-life". Read more »
Republican supporters doing their party proud:
Is enjoying modern videogames so damning an indictment on a man's character that it should preclude him from politics? One Republican candidate certainly thinks so:
But calling out a challenger for playing Halo and blogging? Must be a sign of the times. Read more »
In an effort to traumatise cat owners across Melbourne, the Hun has tastefully illustrated a story about a feline-eating festival as follows: Read more »
I don't see why anyone would be critical of Ten's new subliminal advertising strategy, in which the channel *TEN IS GREAT* intersperses a program with quickly displayed and removed *YOU SHOULD WATCH MORE CHANNEL TEN* advertising logos or other messages *CHANNEL TEN IS YOUR FRIEND*. Frankly, you can hardly blame them for trying it - what were the odds of anyone actually catching them at it *CHANNEL TEN HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG*? Read more »
I thought if the US Congress gave $US 700 billion to the markets, they'd refrain from utterly destroying us all... wasn't that the idea?
Well, it hasn't worked.* Maybe they'd like us to give them more. (More. MORE!) Read more »
In its story on new, intrusive airport x-ray machines, News leaves the last word to anonymous "Suzan of Brisbane":
Suzan of Brisbane asked: "What’s worse, being a fatty, getting scanned and being embarrassed or someone taking a weapon onto a flight and killing everyone?”
Which is of course the obvious alternative. Submit to being dosed with a new, higher level of radiation whenever you get on a plane or YOU'RE LIKELY TO BE BLOWN UP. Read more »
Man, that crushing defeat (hell, forty-nil is almost GroupThink FC territory) would really hurt Victorians' feelings... if rugby wasn't one of the stupidest forms of "football" on the face of the planet. (It's almost gridiron, for god sake.) Read more »
I've been trying to write a blog post this morning without mentioning any of the following:
Nup, can't get those sufficiently out of my head to write about something else. Read more »
...yes, yes, I've written my story on the Wall St crash and what it means for our Herald Sun readers. What's that? It needs a picture? Uh, how about the big board at the ASX? Not enough human interest? How about some people in front of it, some worried-looking stockbrokers for example? No? A young couple you say? Yeah, that could work. How about if they... sorry, a couple with children? Read more »
What more proof do you need? An anonymous source (the most credible kind!) "at a major newsroom" apparently tells ratbag rightwing American blog Instapundit that: Read more »
When the LHC went offline for a few months before having ever actually done the collision experiments that terrified people so, I thought - well, other people thought - "thank God" for the respite before oblivion. Read more »
I was worried after Apple's Justin Long/John Hodgman "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" advertisements that Microsoft was SCREWED. Read more »
