Good is out. No one who's anyone aspires to be a good person anymore. And why would you? As a person of considerable virtue you get absolutely nothing of any value in life. I mean, what do you get? Self-satisfaction? Off-hand I can think of dozens of extremely satisfying but not particularly moral ways of getting a thrill. Freedom from Guilt? As a Catholic I have religious course to Confession, the sinner's greatest boon. Just confess and all that guilt washes away like m...
Americans believe their president is a vampire and they long to see him suck the blood of Muslims. It sounds impossible, even implausible. But the evidence is in and it is dramatic. An entire rodeo stadium cheered the declaration of faux-journalist Borat Sagdiyev when he shouted out (and I paraphrase, because I didn't memorise the lines) "I hope that George Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq". An entire rodeo stadium full of people. And that's what, 5000 ...
There's a quiet revolution going on in the third world, and it's name is micro-credit. The concept is simple. Small loans with no collateral are granted to those who need it most - small stallkeepers, rickshaw drivers, basically anyone who has a pittance to their name but could turn their lives around if only they had a little capital. The amounts are generally tiny in real terms, perhaps just enough to buy a new cart or more profitable stock. The aim is to allow for commercial expansion ...
Tonight Barnaby Joyce was a guest on the Glass House, everyone's favourite ABC news comedy show. In a surprise turn-up for the books he was actually pretty funny. Stand-out performance was when he called Corinne a doormat but he also put up a good defence when interrogated about his positions on the Iraq War. It's always good to see the othe side resort to reason when threatened. It's refreshing in a way that, say, Howard's obfuscation or Fat Bastard's mindless pontificating merely diss...
I don't know if you've noticed but there's been an odd increase in the level of bizarre political spam recently. Most of it could be filed in the staring-mad video-clip posting conspiracy left wing cabinet. There are a few things that puzzle me. Firstly, what's the go? Is there some secret office somewhere directing hordes of zealots to go forth and post? Or has some nutcase figured out how to program? If that's the case then god save us all, for the technical professions, or so I've ...
Steve Irwin died today. Rumours have it he was killed by a stingray sting to the heart. Is anyone surprised he died to one of the animals he spent his entire life pissing off? It's almost poetic justice.
I'm not going to bore anyone by going into political theories on polities and notions of the leviathan, but there are interesting dimensions to the war on terror that I haven't seen addressed in a while. The concept of the modern democratic state is simple. The people of the nation elect a government to represent them - to put it in metaphysical terms the government is the 1, 100 or 1000-man personification of millions of citizens. Their every action is the will of the people. Knowing...
As a student at a mildly vaunted Australian university I am constantly told that I should spend more time researching. My lecturers generally making a point of crossing out every sweeping generalisation I make and, using that barely legible scrawl that passes for handwriting in academia, writing, "You can't say this in an academic essay!" next to it in red pen and then underlined, presumably for added effect. Personally I picture them shaking a fist at the paper as they do this, their pip...
I've noticed an increasing tendency in JU circles to have rather strange beliefs about what, exactly, a WMD is. Some even appear to believe that any non-conventional weapon wielded against 'us' is a WMD. As you can probably tell I disagree. I do not consider a pistol to be a WMD. I do not consider a tank round with depleted uranium to be a WMD. I do not consider an artillery shell capable of firing small NBCs to be a WMD. To my mind a WMD must fulfill two main requirements. 1. I...
I don't know if you've seen it, but there's an ad campaign coming out of the US based on this concept: Link It's a good idea, but it's basically flawed. You see, I'm a bit of an ipod junkie. I think they look cool, they work well and I don't really give a shit about their price when they work so seemlessly with the iTunes store (at the moment the best music store on the Australian market). I like the i'don't campaign. It's cheeky, it's got some cool designs, some good ideas. But ...
A recent discussion on Bakerstreet's blog made me think about what exactly I think a democracy is. His opinion seemed fairly clear - that which claims to be a democracy is a democracy so long as it has elected representatives. I may be oversimplifying his belief, but that's the impression I got. If I got it wrong, I'll change what I've put above. Read what he has to say here: Link I don't agree though. The last century has shown that some of the least democratic governments the wo...
I realise I could be alone in this, but I really love foreign music. You know, those bands that release songs in languages other than english. My reasoning is fairly simple. Have you ever heard a really fantastic riff only to find that some arsehole's tied insipid and totally mood-killing lyrics to it? Or that a hip-hop artist/dj with some phat beats has insisted on ruining it with some litany on the many trials faced by a rich gangsta? In comparison to dealing with that kind of sw...
There are many things that irk me about some greenies. Their rank personal hygiene, the tendency towards irrational and blind obedience to their ideology, their near-fatal lack of a sense of humour, their limited vision for the future. But perhaps the most vexing from my point of view is their near-unshakable belief that we should all 'get back to nature'. I understand of course that they wish to contribute in some way to this process - I feel there can be no other explanation for cult...
One of the hardest things to deal with as someone coming to terms with the political world is rejecting the global conspiracy. It makes life so much easier. Global warming? Corporations/government laughing their way to the bank as they burn trees and have protestors disappeared. Government repression? Corporations/government again, whistling as they crush opposition and ensure the eternal survival of the sacred fifth reich. All the ills of the world, handily attributable to a single f...
Like a number of others on this board I've followed developments on those Danish cartoons with some interest. The latest move comes from the Iranian majors, one of whom has decided to launch a competition about 'the best holocaust cartoon' Link . The concept behind this one is rather simple. If the Danish cartoons were indeed commissioned in order to prove that newspapers have the right to lambast sacred cows regardless of their origin, then naturally the Danish newspaper at the start ...