When going indoor rock-climbing, Jeremy is Read more »
When going indoor rock-climbing, Jeremy is Read more »
Yes, you know some stuff about me. As a result of the determined efforts of a number of creepily obsessed people a few years ago, my name has been openly associated with this blog for some time. As has my profession, which is a fairly public one. Read more »
And we're back. Hope you had a good break and didn't fly anywhere and then spend the entire visit filled with flu and running out of handkerchiefs. Hope you also found the love of your life and have been so deliriously happy that you haven't had time to blog.
So - 2009. Let's get organised. A couple of blog resolutions. Read more »
Sorry about this, few people who are still checking the Intertubes over New Year's, but I'm off to do something crazy and spontaneous early tomorrow morning and might not be back on the computer until the weekend. Read more »
How is this news?
VICTORIA has the highest land transfer duty tax in Australia and needs to quickly scale back its "Byzantine" stamp duty regime to compete with the low-taxing Western Australia and Queensland.
This is the conclusion of research into state business taxes released today by the Institute of Public Affairs. Read more »
Hardly seems like the right word:
DOCTOR Who fans could get their look at the new Doctor next month with the ABC fast-tracking a special Christmas episode of the cult series...
Normally Australian fans have to wait up to nine months for the traditional Doctor Who Christmas special to screen locally, but the ABC has pushed forward the air date given the intense interest in the series... Read more »
As the Pope explains how equal rights for gays will destroy humanity (and the usual suspects throw around inaccurate slurs like "homophobia" - how is it "homophobic" to fear that gays are going to dismantle civilization and cause the extinction of our species?), it occurs to me that it's about time we heterosexual people who oppose equality for gays sat down and made a comprehensive list of our excellent and not in any way pathetically inconsistent and idiotic reasons why. Read more »
To be involved with this, you would have to be one of the most miserable excuses for a human being alive:
Opponents of same-sex marriage in the US state of California, who won a referendum blocking the unions last month, filed suit to annul thousands of gay marriages conducted in the state this year.
What kind of person sues to annul someone else's marriage? Someone else they've never even met? Read more »
Apparently, although it's not like you'd know it if you've spent any time on the Australian internet over the last 24 hours, the Rudd Government has finally announced an emissions trading scheme that has utterly failed to unite the warring sides, remove the risk of global warming, promise no negative economic impact and provide a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Read more »
I don't mind the environment. It's got some things going for it - trees, water, air, the part of the ship the front fell off, all the matter in the universe, and so on. I don't actively try to destroy it, anyway. It can do its thing, I can do mine - I'm happy to live and let live. I think that's a fair approach. Read more »
Why do so many of those countries that barbarically still have the death penalty make a point out of executing prisoners before dawn?
Seems an unnecessary cruelty to me. What's the point of that particular night's sleep? Got to be in bed by ten thirty, I'd hate to be all sleepy and cranky for when ten people with rifles shoot me to death! Read more »
In his about-time excoriating of tourists lured to the "Las Vegas without the sex and gambling" in the UAE, Sathnam Sanghera outlines a series of very good reasons why Dubai deserves to be avoided. (Although his order is rather odd: I'd have started with his point 3 and moved to point 4, after which points 1 and 2 would have seemed a bit superfluous - how does "tastlessness" trump "unethical"?)
But he concludes with an extremely irritating paragraph: Read more »
After that kerfuffle last month (in which haloscan suddenly imploded in an apparent attempt to kill this blog) there was a fair amount of resentment on my part towards the people who wrecked it. You can imagine the snippy email I fired off when they sent a cheerful "welcome to the new haloscan!" email last week.
Today I got this response:
Hi Jeremy,
Unfortunately with the Haloscan founder leaving and a whole host of legacy software and hardware (much of which we didn't have access to) Haloscan was starting to fall over. Read more »
I need a word to go with the following definition:
???, n. The feeling of horror that results from discovering that the long blog post you just wrote and uploaded is remarkably similar to something Andrew Bolt wrote last week.
The Nintendo Wii can be a bit judgmental if it finds a 32 year old man having a go at a slightly cutesy* party videogame:
Every time you see someone laughing at news of abnormally cold weather as if it somehow disproves "global warming" (or, if you don't want to confuse the idiots, "climate change"), there are only two possible explanations. Either they're genuinely stupid and don't understand the theory at all, or they understand it perfectly well and are just fostering ignorance for political gain. Read more »
He's a National Treasure. (Give it up, NZ - he's been ours for years.)
On the first anniversary of our glorious eviction of the worst, most dishonest and contemptible Prime Minister this country ever had* (and the worst Government), it's time to take stock of how much the country has changed now that the people the right call lefties are nominally in charge.
These are the things that stick in my mind as the new Prime Minister's main achievements after twelve months: 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 »
Actually, the solution to the conflict in the Middle East is obvious, but it's one that neither side wants - a non-religious, democratic state which is neither Jewish nor Islamic. It's not Hamas' crazy idea of a muslim religious state in which sharia law is imposed on all who live within its borders. Nor is it Israel's offensive notion of a Jewish religious state in which those who don't share that faith or ethnicity are second-class citizens. Read more »
Obviously the entire world has been waiting for me to publish a post on the recent scuffle/humanitarian tragedy in Gaza*, so the brightest minds on Earth can get to work coming up with a workable peace plan for the region in the comments.
I apologise to all the people who've been ruthlessly slaughtered while I was being slack.
Go to it, anonymous internet problem-solvers! Read more »
If you're planning on celebrating the New Year by sending around a flood of impersonal SMS greetings (and as a shareholder in several telecommunications companies*, I thank you), please, please heed my one request; IDENTIFY YOURSELF AT THE END.
Seriously, I don't have your new/old number in my phone. Don't make me guess who you are.
I mean, of course I'm touched that you added me to your list, but the sentiment is outweighed by the mystery. Read more »
Thank God brave patriots like Queensland LNP leader Lawrence Springborg aren't just going to meekly lie down in the face of a public menace like water fluoridation:
This month, Mr Springborg told The Courier-Mail the LNP was extremely concerned about fluoridation and promised greater community consultation in areas yet to be affected. Read more »
Saturday's Hun proudly gets stuck into those "critics" who were so mean to Ricky Ponting just days earlier:
(via Keri) Read more »
Hope you're spending it with people you love.
If you're into that sort of thing, of course. Maybe you're a misanthrope. Maybe the closeness of other people brings you out in hives. Or maybe you're a sado-masochist and would rather spend the day with people you detest and who detest you, making each other miserable.
Still, as long as you'll be with other people or alone, and enjoying or resenting their company, that's the important thing. Merry annual gift-giving day!
Good.
The white paper on homelessness, The Road Home, was launched yesterday by Mr Rudd, with a pledge to outlay $1.2 billion over four years to build new housing and increase services for the homeless. Read more »
Tradies who offer a cheaper price "for cash" are crooks. Tax cheats. Frauds. Dishonest people, who rip off honest taxpayers shamelessly every day, and do very well out of it. Read more »
They've never expressed the slightest interest in giving me something on my wish list before, but it looks like the Victorian ALP might have a wonderful Xmas present in store for Melbourne commuters this year:
Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky at risk in reshuffle
I don't want to get my hopes up too much - I could be praying for a new Transport Minister and end up with a remote controlled helicopter instead - but it's still pretty exciting. Roll on Xmas!
More reason to get behind Stephen Conroy's inspired plan to try to remove everything naughty from the internet - even hardline family values conservatives are now pro-child pornography (defined as being opposed to the internet filter). Read more »
Alright, so it's been quiet on this blog since Sunday. This may or may not be related to some personal business (can I get three cheers for how much fun breaking up with someone is? No? MAYBE BECAUSE IT'S FRICKING AWFUL) but normal posting should resume shortly. Read more »
Well, there goes civilization. Single women and lesbians no longer being made to jump through unnecessary and arbitrary hoops in order to be allowed to conceive through IVF? These sick, perverted, man-less misandrist harridans (which is, let's face it, what all single women and lesbians are) are to be allowed to procreate? Read more »
Unreliable bastards! We build freeways for you, and you bloody refuse to use them. I mean, not really, there's still gridlock every morning and evening, and we're still doing very nicely out of tolls, but not as well as we could be doing. Which really makes it difficult to justify building more of the things. Read more »
You know when organisations who've cocked up badly refuse to do a mea culpa and instead try to defend the indefensible? Read more »
I'd have thought this was obvious, but apparently not: if you, as a government, add to (or decline to remove from) a piece of legislation an exemption from the Racial Discrimination Act, it's a fairly clear indication that you know it is racially discriminatory. And intend it to have racially discriminatory effects. In fact, that you are happy with the racial discrimination.
Which is a fairly poor thing to be doing, particularly if you've been representing yourself as a progressive party.
I wasn't going to blog about the inhuman response to Belinda Williams' death (since tigtog had already comprehensively demolished the Hun's miserable effort and it seemed that, apart from some residual childish spitefulness by Hun readers that would be the end of it) - but with The Age desperately trying to Read more »
I've got one thing to say to Vodafone's phone answering robot, "Lara" - I hate you.
I hate the way you don't understand basic English.
I hate the way you talk over me with the same recorded message I've heard a dozen times already, rather than listening to what I'm trying to tell you.
I hate the way each of your messages that I can't talk over takes ten to twenty seconds when I'm just trying to GET TO A BLOODY HUMAN.
I hate the way you try to pretend to be a human being with a human name. ("Lara" indeed! You're not fooling anyone.) Read more »
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 »
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