verging_on_random

The MySpace voting formula

Well Joe Hockey added me as a friend but I’ve yet to hear from Julia Gillard. Joe’s worked out how to add music to his page too. Sorry Labor but you’re not looking good in my eyes at the moment. Oh wait, I haven’t heard from the Liberal Party either and I bet they’re not streaming anything. Or if they are, I’m sure I don’t wanna hear it.

I’ll send off a request off to Bob Brown … see how quickly he responds.

******

Jeez, Bob’s page actually looks like it was put together by someone who understands MySpace. No song though … maybe they couldn’t find an mp3 version of ‘Rip rip woodchip’. And he’s got the friggin’ Dalai Lama as his second best friend, which is a tad pretentious. Then again Joe’s best buddy appears to be some random stranger which is just blatant sucking up on Joe’s part. No, unless he rejects my add it looks like Bob gets my vote. Which he was going to get anyway - all right his party, you know what I mean - but it’s nice to have these things confirmed scientifically.

WingnutWorld

It’s truly puzzling that so much stuff like this keeps getting churned out by the Wingnut bloggers and pundits:

And The Left Claims There’s A Consensus On Global Warming

Are said Democrats going to recognize that they’ve been playing to the fears of Americans?

I mean has it escaped the notice of these dipshits that even people like Dubya and Rupert Murdoch have admitted that something has to be done about global warming? There’s plenty of room for continuing discussion about the causes and implications of climate change but these obsessive attempts to paint it as a devious ploy owned and controlled by The Left are just delusional. It’s one thing to develop an argument using selective data but pretending that the facts are red when plainly they are blue is suggestive of serious mental dysfunction.

The ‘alternative reality’ expression gets thrown around way too much but I think it’s apt for these freaks … they live in a reality where the war in Iraq is a terrific triumph, Islamofascism is rapidly conquering Europe, attacking Iran would cause the Iranians to rise up spontaneously and install a democratic regime and global warming is a leftist conspiracy intended to let the liberals impose an authoritarian rule over the freedom-loving people of the world.

The scary thing is that when you look at who lives in this alternative reality, one of the first people you see is the Vice-President of the USA.

Blogs and education

I’ll be presenting a paper at a conference in a couple of weeks on the use of blogs as teaching tools in higher education - specifically in teaching industrial relations. In the unlikely event that anybody is interested, you can download the paper here.

Spectacular Howard win at APEC

Today has been a frabjous day in the history of the human race. Church bells have rung out across the globe, and in cities from Paris to Pretoria, spontaneous street dancing has been the order of the day. As you have no doubt read elsewhere, our prime minister has announced a stunning APEC triumph that will fix up global warming. God bless the prime minister!

Curious to know how he did it, I asked an insider source. Needless to say, he spoke on condition of confidentiality.

***

The Man of Steel closed the door behind his two distinguished guests and said “Good to see you both! Again!! Now while you’re both here I need you to do me a favour.”

Turning to one president, he said “We have to come to some agreement about climate change.”

The president’s brow furrowed and he called for an interpreter. As he stood in deep thought, the Man of Steel turned to the figure leaning against the mantelpiece, moodily spinning a globe as he tried to figure out whether there really were two countries called Australia and Austria or whether Condi was playing another of her practical jokes.

“George,” said the Man of Steel, “I know you are preoccupied with the situation in Iraq …”

“Damn right!” interrupted the second president. “We’re kicking ass!”

“Yes I know,” the Man of Steel hastened to assure his friend, “And I wish I hadn’t had to rule your Iraq speech out of order when you gave it so eloquently today under the ‘intellectual property’ agenda item, but the point of order from the floor was unfortunately correct.”

“Damn Clark woman’s an asshole,” muttered the president.

“Ah yes, but George when they took the ‘Z’ out of ‘ANZUS’ it left you and me in a tight spot.” The two friends laughed at the old joke and the president’s good humour returned. “Say what were you and President What nattering about?” he asked.

“I was urging him to agree to some measures that might ameliorate anthropogenic global warming,” replied the Man of Steel.

The president’s brow furrowed and he called for an interpreter. The first president spread his hands and said quietly, “Perhaps we could consent to an aspirational target.”

“Not while we’re in office surely!” snapped the other president.

“Of course not,” smiled his Chinese colleague. “Let us choose a suitable date that we can all live with.”

“Well I’m gone year after next unless that martial law plan of Dick’s comes off,” grumbled the American leader. “What about you, Jim?”

“I have nothing to add to what I have said in the past,” replied the Man of Steel. “I will serve my party as long as they want me.” The Chinese president scowled – his advisers had not told him Australia was a one party state. “I believe my party will need me for some time yet,” he continued, “but I plan to consider my position about my 80^th birthday. Approximately and hypothetically, you understand.”

“How about an aspirational target for 2030 then? Let’s say a cut in emissions of what, a quarter?” suggested Mr Bush, glancing at his watch and wondering when the steaks would be done. The other leaders nodded their heads. “Wonderful,” enthused the Man of Steel, “Our opponents’ aspirational target doesn’t kick in until 2050.”

“That’s because he’s a lot younger than you!” exclaimed the American, roaring with laughter. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” replied the shrunken figure, turning away in a dignified manner.

One of the Man of Steel’s advisers nervously asked if he could make an observation.

“The … other chap … has offered a cut of 50%,” he stammered.

“It is not a problem,” smiled the Chinese president inscrutably. “In my country we have a saying … figures plucked from air all speak the same language.”

“Ummm … yes, very wise,” mumbled his two fellow-leaders.

“Anyway are we agreed then?” cried the Man of Steel. The other two replied sullenly that they supposed so. “Fine, let’s go tell the others!” he piped brightly, and they all went off for lunch.

Another MyLestone

Just noticed this on MySpace today:

8 Sep 2007

Your Network:

200,078,165

That’s a lot of people hosting ads. And they said Rupert was mad to pay half a billion. Who’s laughing now?

I really don’t get the people who condemn MySpace as a kids’ thing while boosting the superiority of Facebook as more suitable for adults. I just suspended my Facebook account and I doubt I’ll ever resurrect it. All the poking and gifts and sundry other crapola seems quintessentially juvenile, much more so than MySpace, which seems to me to offer a brilliantly flexible home page without unnecessary gimmicks. Even if they did accept Kevin Rudd as a member.

Worshipping the ghosts of the fallen

So the remains of two more Australian soldiers have been found in Belgium, and identified thanks to the miracle of DNA technology.

Having been dug up, they will now be reburied ‘with full military honours at Belgium’s Buttes cemetery on October 4.’ Except they died 90 years ago, which kind of begs the question: What’s the point?

The same question can be asked about the Australian government’s decision to pay for relatives of the two men to have a nice little holiday in Europe at our expense, just so they can attend the funeral. For one lady of a certain age interviewed on tonight’s ABC News, it will be her opportunity to find closure … for a great uncle who died long before she was born. Forgive me for wondering just how legitimate any emotional link can be between someone and their great uncle who they never knew.

I had a relative die in Indonesia in World War 2. He was a proper uncle, my father’s younger brother, none of this great uncle stuff. Or actually it’s wrong to say he ‘was’ an uncle because he was dead long before I was conceived. He ‘would have been’ my uncle is more accurate, I think. My Uncle Alan - that’s where my middle name comes from. His photo hung on our hallway wall until my parents died.

This is him:

He was a really good-looking young bloke and a lot wilder than my parents, from all accounts (although in my family that might just have meant he liked a beer occasionally). I reckon I would have liked him and occasionally, in my younger days, I felt a bit sad for him. But I can’t say I ever felt a gaping void in my life that ached for ‘closure’ - an expression that crept into our language a few years ago and now seems to afflict vast numbers of people.

I never heard whether Uncle Alan was buried in a marked grave, so I assume he wasn’t. Apparently he was swept away crossing a river … maybe the army never knew what happened to him. The retreat from the Japanese after Singapore wasn’t one of our finest hours.

But it’s conceivable that one day they might find his remains in Java, in some makeshift wartime grave. Would I care? I doubt it. And I certainly wouldn’t expect the government to pay for me to go to some re-burial service. Colour me cynical, but I’m afraid I would regard such a gesture as a cheap attempt to get political advantage from something that happened a long time ago, that has nothing whatsoever to do with anyone still alive today.

The ‘housing crisis’

These are pictures of a place called Casuarina.

Casuarina didn’t exist when I moved up here 13 years ago. Now it’s a massive housing estate, growing in all directions like a malignant tumour.

I don’t know much about architecture but it seems to me that Casuarina has an eclectic mix of styles.

There’s the ‘industrial estate’ school:

The ‘Pentridge’ or ‘Stalag XIII’ school (and WTF is that all about anyway? Are they terrorist watchtowers or what?):

The ‘Stalinist dachau’ school:

The ever-popular ‘faux motel’ school:

And finally, the cute ‘Brighton Beach changing shed’ school:

Now you might think, looking at these different styles, that the place must look like a god-awful mess.

And you’d be correct.

But it doesn’t matter. You see, most of these houses, even though they’re less than five years old, are

It’s not so much a housing estate as a ginormous futures exchange: heaps of tradeable commodities sprawling in the sun so people can engage in speculative buying and selling to make capital gains.

Monday to Friday, after the builders have departed, the place is deserted. It would be an ideal set for making a movie about the after-effects of a neutron bomb or the bird flu or something. Sure a few of them are ‘houses’ in the sense that people use them to live in but quite a lot are only used as weekenders pending exchange of contracts, and a large proportion just sit there as the builders left them, blinds drawn, power disconnected, not a stick of furniture in sight. They’re like rare bottles of old wine - nobody buys them to use them for their intended purpose. They buy them so they can sell them again.

There are plenty more places like this within 50 km of where I live. They’ve kept every builder and tradesman in South East Queensland busy for years, which is why home prices around here have roughly tripled since 2000.

Any politician who wants to understand why houses are unaffordable could do a lot worse than visit Casuarina. Likewise anyone who doesn’t grasp the ramifications of a collapse in real estate prices.

Howard keeps blaming the states for housing unaffordability. I tell you what, if a state government managed to do something that actually did cause house prices to come down significantly, the screams of outrage would echo around the globe.

Because when people talk about housing affordability they don’t really want prices to come down … they just want access to cheap finance. That’s the dilemma that the Howard Government’s ridiculous tax policies have created. Governments are now locked into a system where people measure prosperity by their assets, not their incomes. And when the assets start to depreciate, it’s gunna get reeeaallly ugly for whoever happens to be in power.