An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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First
I agree.
Anna Funder’s PEN speech On Courage
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/fora/stories/2008/11/21/2412512.htm
Heavy political stuff going down in Canada. A change of Govt is on the cards with the three opposition parties looking to form a coalition.
I’m puzzled as to why they didn’t do this immediately after the election, they always had the numbers to go to the GG with this proposition anyway. Maybe they were looking for a reason or some time to work out where their respective interests lay in such a situation.
Tamworth floods and lots of road closures and good old local ABC radio put on the bloody cricket at ten am.
Good to see Canbadian PM Harpur getting his come-uppance. His partisanship in his speech to the Australian Parliament backing the Libs kast year was disgraceful. Also, unless we get rid of all these brainless neocons we’ve no hope of bringing the GFC to an end as they will simply continue policies that make it worse.
Have been vaguely considering getting onto World of Warcraft. Have checked out the site, noted the ten day free trial, trailer, characters, how to use etc.Haven’t checked out the cost via Visa debit yet, but if its too expensive will give it a miss. Any advice? It will be much appreciated.
It looks like Dungeons & Dragons with bells on.
Paul @ 7 – most of the MMORPG games cost around $15-$20/month plus (sometimes) an upfront fee for the CDs. I played a bit of WoW and quite liked it, though eventually settled on Lord of the rings online, something my wife and I both really enjoy playing together. If you really want dungeons and dragons, there is also a dungeons and dragons MMORPG which attempts to be faithful to the original game.
And just a warning – some people find MMORPGs very addictive.
Thanks, Chris, (a different one. Doesn’t sound like the cost is too bad. Apart from cigarettes sometimes, I don’t have an addictive personality. Besides, my research work keeps me pretty occupied.Thanks for the warning, though.
I suppose it uses up a fair bit of your monthly broadband capacity?
Can China engineer a recovery, and if not, what are the implications for Australia?
Currently, all indicators on the Chinese economy are worse than expected:
Setser: If you only read one thing on China this fall … World Bank China Quarterly
WSJ: China’s steel industry slows down
NY Times: A Global Downturn Puts the Brakes on China’s Industry
Bloomberg: China Economic Indicators Showed ‘Faster Decline’ in November
Newsweek: Why Beijing Is In A Risky Place
Possibly the best indicator of Chinese economic activity is electricity consumption which was down 4% YOY last month.
According to John Garnaut its all because heavy industry has slowed down dramatically:
So … is anyone buying BHP shares, and why?
Well I have quite a large quota (40Gb/month) as I work from home in a field that requires quite a bit of downloads so I don’t notice the extra usage by MMORPGs. In general they are not as bad as you might first expect as all the textures and game data is on the DVD/CD and so it really doesn’t have to download that much while you play. At a very rough guess maybe 10Mb/hr? Updates to the games which are pretty irregular will use quite a bit though (up to a few hundred megabytes).
Just in case you all haven’t received your fill of emails complaining about the obfuscating forays of climate sceptics into the media, here’s another.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24723425-11949,00.html
Sporting an eye-catching headline and the usual ‘debunked-climate-change-sceptic-as-environmental-expert’ strategy, the article interestingly omits the following – and, one may say, rather significant – research finding (sourced from this CSIRO media release – http://www.csiro.au/news/Southern-Ocean-Circulation.html):
“Co-author, CSIRO’s Dr Steve Rintoul, says the Southern Ocean was found to have become warmer and fresher since the 1960s – a pattern consistent with the ‘fingerprint’ of climate change caused by carbon emissions from human activity.”
Although the author’s selective presentation of data follows the garden-variety and somewhat unethical strategy of sceptics, this was not what had me grinding my teeth in frustration. Rather, it was the rank hypocrisy contained within. This is an article which accuses ‘climate change protagonists’ of cherry-picking climate data (in this case a scientific media release) to further their own agendas by cherry-picking the self same climate data!
While it may be argued that such a deft use of irony brilliantly underlines the article’s raison d’etre, I would submit two alternative hypotheses: that the author is a closet sceptic (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24381003-11949,00.html) or a poor researcher (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,,24643927-17044,00.html). A quick and dirty search of The Australian’s online archives does not permit the rejection of either.
(Lame) jokes aside, this is remains a major problem. The tolerance of such loose reporting on such a critical topic – i.e. will Dr Rintoul or the CSIRO publicly correct this nationally available article? – gives the public impression that scientific opinion is yet to coalesce around the threat of anthropogenically induced climate change.
This was bought to my attention at a recent community forum I attended in my hometown of Bairnsdale (rural Victoria). A panel of biologists (Prof Barry Hart, Prof John Beardall, Prof David Mitchell and Prof Max Finlayson) graciously made themselves available to discuss the future health of the Gippsland Lakes (although the government employed panelist would more likely define the evening as an interrogation). While I was encouraged to see 200-plus members attendees, including the mustachioed yet supportive federal MP Darren Chester and his less enthusiastic state counterpart, Craig Ingram, it was widely remarked that the sense that ‘everything’ll be right, mate’ dominated the broader community. I believe that this iconic and nationally celebrated passiveness is the primary obstacle to significant community-orientated climate change action. Whilst authors such as John Stapleton (I am hesitant to use the term journalist here) are under no pressure to produce BALANCED YET OBJECTIVE critiques of climate change science, then I fear it will be extremely difficult to convince a sufficient proportion of Australians to actively address the challenges of climate change.
Not so much what I did today, as what I did last night which was fly through the storm that flattened Tamworth, on a Sydney-Brisbane flight that left at 8.30pm, having already delayed by 90 minutes by the thunderstorm that hit Sydney at 4.30pm. Plane going up and down as well as side to side. Economy bar service cancelled. Bloody scary. Makes you wonder about the need to do interstate travel for one day planning meetings.
Terry @ 11. Time to get them up to speed on Web conferencing (hellava lot cheaper).
Far as I’m concerned, never having to be physically at a meeting ever again is one of the Internet’s true +++++++++
BTW, best wishes to all in Tamworth.
For those too young to remember: this is the sort of East Coast weather I remember from childhood – 1947-76, in fact (lived in Bris). We rarely planned to go anywhere in “The Wet”. From Qld’s far north to at least mid-way down NSW, it poured & flooded. We carried a “caught between creeks” box of canned & dry food (& primus, change of clothes etc) in the boot. It doesn’t seem that dams, higher bridges and sealed roads have made much difference when The Wet sets in.
@DeeCee @12. I work for an IT consultancy, we use web meetings and conferencing internally. Amongst our customer base there’s a small but significant group of managers who think that weekly flights and five star hotels are a nice part of the job.
I seem to have spent most of the last 6 months on a plane going to meet people to convince them of the benefits of not flying
DeeCee
The catch is that the day saw several people video conference in and the experience was pretty darn ordinary. Cameras didn’t work, connection failed, people couldn’t hear what was going on at the main location. I suspect that an hour of that would have had me thinking that I should have taken the flight down after all.
Its sure to improve, but I think we’ve been holding out for video conferencing as the future since the 1989 pilots’ strike, when the alternative was sometimes to take an RAAF Hercules down to the meeting.
How the turtle got its shell.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/11/odontochelys_a_transitional_tu.php
Another chance for proponents of the the “god of the gaps” to proclaim that another “gap” has been revealed. (Amazing that whenever transitional fossils are discovered, the more the assertions that there are no transitional fossils or that the definition of “transitional” is “re-interpreted”)
In any event, it’s put paid to the theory that the shell evolved from skin.
Obama as Mac Daddy.
Peter, send them here mate: http://www.transitional-fossil.com
Jobs a good ‘un, sit back and have a beer.
There’s a Brisbane rally against the Government’s plans to censor the Internet on Saturday, December 13th.
It’s at Brisbane Square, George St, (just across George St from the end of the Queen St Mall) from 11am.
For other states, check here:
http://nocensorship.info/forum/index.php
Chris(a different one @ 11,
Thanks for that info.
It’s reassuring.
Andrew Reynolds: First
Fatfingers: I agree.
.
I don’t. You are lying.
Paul@4 – if it’s anything like what happens in Australia, the GG calls in the Prime Minister who called the election and asks if he/she can form a government. If he says yes, the old government is back in and there’s no call to send for the opposition. The only thing they can do now is force a motion of no confidence, which is more in line with democratic principles and rendering the GG as a rubber stamp rather than a player.
Youtube ad for the anti-Internet-censorshi rallies is now online:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBdWjIrUn4
Chutzpa of the week, for the century:
From the smh
Shorter Bush: It wasn’t me, it was Dick Cheney who cherry picked and stovepiped that unsubstantiated intel which I found on my desk when I was looking for an excuse to go to war.