Robot Attack
I could have waited for an iPhone. Luckily, I don't much care about the apps, especially games. Although I do like the tricorder.
29 December 2010
Snow Day
If I remember, This is what cost Mayor Lindsay his job. I’ve seen enough on Facebook and elsewhere to know this was a truly epic storm, so I’d cut the guy some slack, but this isn’t going to help.
If I remember, This is what cost Mayor Lindsay his job. I’ve seen enough on Facebook and elsewhere to know this was a truly epic storm, so I’d cut the guy some slack, but this isn’t going to help.
SCG Blues
This being summer in the antipodes, cricket is the game to watch, so I’ve put some time in this year to learn a bit about it, the Ashes being an especially iconic test match. That England gets to keep for the first time in 14 years. They deserve it. They outplayed the Australian eleven pretty much throughout, on offense and defence. God knows it’s got to be pretty nearly impossible to make a comeback from a first innings score under 100, or even 200, especially when your opponent seems capable of doubling that rate or better, and we managed to be caught out pretty easily for just such results more than once.
It’s not like we weren’t trying, of course. The Ashes is a big deal here. But in Melbourne, for the Boxing Day test, whereas England bowled 42 overs in the first innings, Australia expended 159. This meant we spent a lot of time chasing balls before managing to take a wicket, whether caught out, leg-by-wicket, or bowled out, whereas we hit quite regularly to just where the English thought we would, our batsmen caught out.
And I’d rather not mention the second innings performance.
There’s some suggestion that this was inevitable, given the recent spate of retirements of such as Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, leaving Australian cricket bereft of talent, and it’s interesting to note that whereas two on the English side are more regularly 20/20 players than in test cricket, all but two of the Aussie eleven are 20/20 stalwarts. Strategy and skill-sets would be quite different, I’d think, but I guess either the selectors didn’t think so or their available pool is indeed diminished. So I blame Rupert Murdoch and television. And no wonder. Games that take four days to play are pretty hard on the attention-span, especially when they start at 10 a.m. and run past 6 p.m. (Who invented such a thing? Or did cricket evolve to this? Must read more CLR James.)
This being summer in the antipodes, cricket is the game to watch, so I’ve put some time in this year to learn a bit about it, the Ashes being an especially iconic test match. That England gets to keep for the first time in 14 years. They deserve it. They outplayed the Australian eleven pretty much throughout, on offense and defence. God knows it’s got to be pretty nearly impossible to make a comeback from a first innings score under 100, or even 200, especially when your opponent seems capable of doubling that rate or better, and we managed to be caught out pretty easily for just such results more than once.
It’s not like we weren’t trying, of course. The Ashes is a big deal here. But in Melbourne, for the Boxing Day test, whereas England bowled 42 overs in the first innings, Australia expended 159. This meant we spent a lot of time chasing balls before managing to take a wicket, whether caught out, leg-by-wicket, or bowled out, whereas we hit quite regularly to just where the English thought we would, our batsmen caught out.
And I’d rather not mention the second innings performance.
There’s some suggestion that this was inevitable, given the recent spate of retirements of such as Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, leaving Australian cricket bereft of talent, and it’s interesting to note that whereas two on the English side are more regularly 20/20 players than in test cricket, all but two of the Aussie eleven are 20/20 stalwarts. Strategy and skill-sets would be quite different, I’d think, but I guess either the selectors didn’t think so or their available pool is indeed diminished. So I blame Rupert Murdoch and television. And no wonder. Games that take four days to play are pretty hard on the attention-span, especially when they start at 10 a.m. and run past 6 p.m. (Who invented such a thing? Or did cricket evolve to this? Must read more CLR James.)
16 December 2010
10 December 2010
O, My
I don’t have anything against Oprah. I think her book club probably did a lot of good, for example. Her show, last I saw of it, and which wasn’t very often anyway, did seem to have devolved from the kind of tabloid-ish self-help and “awareness” topics she became famous for into celebrity-sharing and scream-fest giveaways, but if that’s what she wants and what keeps her brand going, that’s up to her. Her trip to Australia, is just perplexing, and not just the reaction to it.
Tourism’s a great thing and a big part of the economy here, and we spent millions of dollars to bring her down. I don’t imagine recouping that very soon as an immediate consequence of Oprah’s visit. The 8,000 people in Melbourne’s Federation Square today, for example, are likely for the most part locals and unlikely in consequence to spend any money, whether for public transport or lunch, than they would have already, but the disruption they’ll have caused to traffic will surely have a flow-on effect to productivity and revenue elsewhere. Maybe not much, but just wait until the big O gets to Sydney and the rebranded Oprah House. At least there’ll be an offset in parking fees and fines and ticket sales. But her 300 imported audience members aren’t likely to bring about much of a difference. Even after they get home and tell everyone how wonderful Australia is, with the U.S. economy in the tank, how many Qantas flights will that translate to?
Good luck to her and the various Federal and State Tourism Ministers, hotel associations, etc. But 8,000 people standing around for a fifteen minute look at Oprah waving to them? Weird.
I don’t have anything against Oprah. I think her book club probably did a lot of good, for example. Her show, last I saw of it, and which wasn’t very often anyway, did seem to have devolved from the kind of tabloid-ish self-help and “awareness” topics she became famous for into celebrity-sharing and scream-fest giveaways, but if that’s what she wants and what keeps her brand going, that’s up to her. Her trip to Australia, is just perplexing, and not just the reaction to it.
Tourism’s a great thing and a big part of the economy here, and we spent millions of dollars to bring her down. I don’t imagine recouping that very soon as an immediate consequence of Oprah’s visit. The 8,000 people in Melbourne’s Federation Square today, for example, are likely for the most part locals and unlikely in consequence to spend any money, whether for public transport or lunch, than they would have already, but the disruption they’ll have caused to traffic will surely have a flow-on effect to productivity and revenue elsewhere. Maybe not much, but just wait until the big O gets to Sydney and the rebranded Oprah House. At least there’ll be an offset in parking fees and fines and ticket sales. But her 300 imported audience members aren’t likely to bring about much of a difference. Even after they get home and tell everyone how wonderful Australia is, with the U.S. economy in the tank, how many Qantas flights will that translate to?
Good luck to her and the various Federal and State Tourism Ministers, hotel associations, etc. But 8,000 people standing around for a fifteen minute look at Oprah waving to them? Weird.
08 December 2010
Drips & Drabs
It's hard to believe that I'd agree with even half of anything John Howard has to say, even over "Wikileaks", but I do. Half, anyway. Frankly, I don't regard the leaks as any more of an offense than I do Julian Assange's action in publishing them. What I do see is the media ganging up on someone stepping on the turf they'd been gaming for decades and politicians crying foul over being caught out in lies and obfuscation. In both cases I think we all know we knew it all along. No surprises here, except insofar as we now see how far even ostensibly liberal governments will go along with the kinds of prosecutorial abuses we thought were only a Bush II purview. Whether or not the Swedish courts have a case against Assange, the fact that the U.S. is already in discussions with them over extradition show how valuable Guantanamo is to Obama, and Australia's Julia Gillard's self-serving assessments of Assange's "irresponsibility", insofar as it allows her to declare illegality without coming straight out with it, give us Labor as Howard-lite, even while Howard distances himself from such an assessment.
I welcome Wikileaks. Post that crap. But let's see what else we can get: from Britain, France, Germany, China . . . . it shows up every creep in the public service, free society or not, for exactly what we know them to be: self-serving, greedy, rapacious bastards causing more trouble than they're worth.
Funny I should post such an assessment after bagging the Tea-Baggers, I suppose, but I'm no less put out by Obama caving at every turn than I am by Palin mischaracterising all of U.S. history than I am by Labor's failures here or the Liberal's fight against the working class than I am by . . . . we need something better than democracies that have abandoned democracy. Transparency and a strong, fearless, but righteous media are valuable, even in the form of socio-inadroit (or even sociopathological) individuals like Julian Assange.
Publish and be damned, but publish. We need to know for sure what's all too easily hidden or told as lies.
It's hard to believe that I'd agree with even half of anything John Howard has to say, even over "Wikileaks", but I do. Half, anyway. Frankly, I don't regard the leaks as any more of an offense than I do Julian Assange's action in publishing them. What I do see is the media ganging up on someone stepping on the turf they'd been gaming for decades and politicians crying foul over being caught out in lies and obfuscation. In both cases I think we all know we knew it all along. No surprises here, except insofar as we now see how far even ostensibly liberal governments will go along with the kinds of prosecutorial abuses we thought were only a Bush II purview. Whether or not the Swedish courts have a case against Assange, the fact that the U.S. is already in discussions with them over extradition show how valuable Guantanamo is to Obama, and Australia's Julia Gillard's self-serving assessments of Assange's "irresponsibility", insofar as it allows her to declare illegality without coming straight out with it, give us Labor as Howard-lite, even while Howard distances himself from such an assessment.
I welcome Wikileaks. Post that crap. But let's see what else we can get: from Britain, France, Germany, China . . . . it shows up every creep in the public service, free society or not, for exactly what we know them to be: self-serving, greedy, rapacious bastards causing more trouble than they're worth.
Funny I should post such an assessment after bagging the Tea-Baggers, I suppose, but I'm no less put out by Obama caving at every turn than I am by Palin mischaracterising all of U.S. history than I am by Labor's failures here or the Liberal's fight against the working class than I am by . . . . we need something better than democracies that have abandoned democracy. Transparency and a strong, fearless, but righteous media are valuable, even in the form of socio-inadroit (or even sociopathological) individuals like Julian Assange.
Publish and be damned, but publish. We need to know for sure what's all too easily hidden or told as lies.
06 December 2010
The Rich You Will Have with You Always
And always complaining about their taxes, too, or at least their Republican lackeys will whinge.
Meanwhile, Warren Buffett, who has probably done more in his life to make other people rich in addition to his own accumulation of wealth, speaks honestly and directly, saying he’s willing to pay more and we shouldn’t listen to anyone like him who says otherwise. And with the national deficit out of control as a result of the Bush tax cuts and two quagmire wars, we get Mitch McConnell telling us the “argument is over” on the tax cuts, but continuing on unemployment extension.
The whole country went completely nuts when Obama got elected. Eight years of Bush, with the Republicans pushing through every mad scheme when we all knew it was madness, repudiated in 2008 with the inevitable Democratic election, and they can only think selfishly of insisting on the legitimacy of their legacy of debt and destruction.
Conservatism used to refer to the principles of slowing change, not reversing it, let alone the kinds of changes that were enacted: the nearly untrammelled power of the executive branch, the gap between rich and everyone else growing nearly exponentially, unwinnable wars, a national debt that staggers the imagination . . . where’s the conservation in any of that? But not only are these things to be conserved, they should be at the expense of Federal power.
The rhetoric of Bush legacy partisans in government, the media and our neighborhoods is talk of “States rights” and includes an increase in commemorations of secession and the Confederacy? Any connection to health care reform? Bailouts? Maybe federation has passed it’s use-by date.
And always complaining about their taxes, too, or at least their Republican lackeys will whinge.
Meanwhile, Warren Buffett, who has probably done more in his life to make other people rich in addition to his own accumulation of wealth, speaks honestly and directly, saying he’s willing to pay more and we shouldn’t listen to anyone like him who says otherwise. And with the national deficit out of control as a result of the Bush tax cuts and two quagmire wars, we get Mitch McConnell telling us the “argument is over” on the tax cuts, but continuing on unemployment extension.
The whole country went completely nuts when Obama got elected. Eight years of Bush, with the Republicans pushing through every mad scheme when we all knew it was madness, repudiated in 2008 with the inevitable Democratic election, and they can only think selfishly of insisting on the legitimacy of their legacy of debt and destruction.
Conservatism used to refer to the principles of slowing change, not reversing it, let alone the kinds of changes that were enacted: the nearly untrammelled power of the executive branch, the gap between rich and everyone else growing nearly exponentially, unwinnable wars, a national debt that staggers the imagination . . . where’s the conservation in any of that? But not only are these things to be conserved, they should be at the expense of Federal power.
The rhetoric of Bush legacy partisans in government, the media and our neighborhoods is talk of “States rights” and includes an increase in commemorations of secession and the Confederacy? Any connection to health care reform? Bailouts? Maybe federation has passed it’s use-by date.
03 December 2010
The Outer Space Years
Oh, yeah, I remember the Outer Space Men, I think we had all of them, maybe except the squid guy, but I had no inkling that their genesis had anything to do with Major Matt Mason, although we pretty much had all of that stuff, at one point or another, too. There were some excellent toys in those days, probably made from highly toxic substances.
Oh, yeah, I remember the Outer Space Men, I think we had all of them, maybe except the squid guy, but I had no inkling that their genesis had anything to do with Major Matt Mason, although we pretty much had all of that stuff, at one point or another, too. There were some excellent toys in those days, probably made from highly toxic substances.
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