June 2007

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Failure IS an option

25 June 2007 in Business, Human Nature by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Hugh MacLeod has written a great little piece pointing out that bravado about “Failure is not an option” is just stupid. I also like some of the comments from readers:

  • “Failure is not an option” people are invariably the ones least willing to deliver the intellectual and physical juice to lessen the probability of failure.
  • “Failure is not an option” people are invariably the same people who said, two paragraphs earlier, that they want bold, risk-taking approaches.

Failure is always an option, which of course you want to avoid, But if failure is inevitable, then fail fast — and then adapt.

Last night I had to re-boot the oven because it had crashed. I only wanted to grill a couple of tomatoes for our dinner. Does it really require that amount of computational complexity?

25 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Trash sculptures

24 June 2007 in Arts by Stilgherrian | No comments

I’ve been very serious today so the time’s come for something a little more light-hearted — sculptures of garbage that, when looked at from exactly the right angle, form a silhouette of the artists.

Photo of sculpture by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Thanks to Signal vs Noise for the link.

Note to Aust military: tell us about brave deeds

24 June 2007 in Defence, Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Photograph of Australia's Distinguished Service Medal

Why was this story of Aussie bravery kept quiet for two and a half years?

Dear Department of Defence, if it’s worth awarding two Distinguished Service Medals for, it’s a story worth telling. Particularly as Australia involves itself in politically unpopular wars and the boys and girls who put their lives on the line need our support.

Surely you can tell enough of the story to inspire the kiddies without “revealing operational secrets”. Hell, I’d love to record this kind of oral history!

Releasing the news this week makes it look like you’re trying to distract us from that awful helicopter crash.

Howard’s concern seems genuine — genuine spin, that is

24 June 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

John Howard’s racist intervention into the management of Aboriginal child sex abuse cases seems to be based on genuine personal shock, at least according to one feature story yesterday:

“I thought the report was just horrific,” he said yesterday. “This is very genuine. I am distressed. It is terrible. Little children. Don’t underestimate the personal interest and commitment to this. Or Mal Brough [Howard's Minister for Indigenous Affairs]. He is quite passionate about doing something on this subject. I said to him, ‘We’ve got to do something, we’ve got to grab hold of this. The territory’s not going to do anything.’”

But once that’s out of the way, the spin begins:

“It’s just terrible. Just imagine if it was Dickson, or Brunswick or Marrickville or whatever. It’s just intolerable and you’ve just got to do something about it.

Cute choice of examples, Mr Howard. I don’t know about Dickson (are you reading this, Antony Green?), but I live in the Marrickville electorate and Brunswick is the Melbourne equivalent — both multicultural Labour-voting areas.

Howard’s choice is 100% political. Mention left-wing heartlands so those on the left take the example personally and sympathise with the pain, and those on the right are reminded that these mixed-race communities are a hotbed of sordidness. He certainly doesn’t say “Just imagine if it was Mosman or Elsternwick.”

I mean, there’s no child sexual abuse in suburbs with deciduous trees, and Howard wouldn’t risk upsetting core Liberal party voters by even suggesting it were possible.

Howard doesn’t mention that the Little Children are Sacred report is the 13th enquiry into Aboriginal child sexual abuse since he became PM — three of them federal enquiries!

He doesn’t mention that NT chief minister Clare Martin proposed an interventionist solution a year ago — which he ignored.

He doesn’t mention that federal funding to tackle this issue was cut 4 years ago.

But he does keep emphasizing that he’s taking control, that he’s in control, that once more he’s Big Strong Daddy.

And as I write that a sudden thought crosses my mind. Isn’t Big Strong Daddy the one committing most child sexual abuse?

[P.S. There's interesting comments on this issue attached to my original post. Enjoy.]

A Crikey-led traffic burst

24 June 2007 in Blogging by Stilgherrian | No comments

Writing for Crikey this week triggered an interesting burst of activity.

  • Website traffic doubled for a couple of days.
  • I was blogged about by Tim Dunlop over in Murdochland.
  • People from my past emerged from the woodwork — including Keith Conlon, the man who first taught me broadcasting.

Weird coincidences upped the traffic too:

  • Interest in Australia’s new ambassador to Italy, Amanda Vanstone, led more than 400 people to read my posting about Boost juice bars.
  • 200 people looking for live TV coverage of the space shuttle landing found my post about the previous shuttle touchdown.

But I’m still getting plenty of folks looking for those goddam Steve Irwin jokes , or discovering how to spell Vodafone.

Photograph of John Howard

Ah, look at John Howard’s smug look now! Even though accused yesterday that his plan to combat Aboriginal child sexual abuse was racist, he’s on a roll. Taking porn from the naughty blackfellas is just the start. All bad parents will be punished. Not assisted, note, but punished.

23 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Coonan fails broadband history (no surprise)

22 June 2007 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

The more you dig, the more it’s obvious that communications minister Helen Coonan is completely out of her depth.

On the ABC’s The Insiders on 25 March, the Raccoonan said: “If you just look back a couple of years ago no-one had even heard about broadband.”

No, Senator, I think it’s only you who hadn’t heard of it. The rest of us had it connected to our homes and offices.

Even 12 years ago there was Paul Keating’s Broadband Services Expert Group. Their final report included recommendations like:

With the spread of broadband infrastructure, broadband links be provided to all schools, libraries, medical and community centres by the year 2001.

And:

Telecommunications carriers and broadband network operators be required to inform government annually of their strategies for upgrading their networks, including the expected level of digitisation of existing network services, and the expected extent of broadband network coverage. This requirement should be reviewed by the year 2000.

Hat tip to Prof Roger Clarke for bringing this one to my attention.

[P.S. If you haven't already done so, please vote in my poll about Coonan. If you're reading this in the RSS feed, you'll have to go to my website for that.]

Prime Minister John Howard rides his white horse into Aboriginal Australia to save the kiddies. Yes, banning pornography will prevent child sexual abuse, apparently — despite a complete lack of evidence to support that idea. Despite the fact that whities committing sexual abuse against white kids won’t have pornography banned in their communities. And despite JWH being on the record as saying he’s opposed to censorship of any kind. Just how many ways can you be a complete hypocrite in the one news story?

22 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | 13 comments

I should mention that most of my photos I’ve been posting here lately have been taken with my Nokia N80 Nseries “multimedia phone”. Not too foul for a camera with a lens the size of a burst pimple.

22 June 2007 by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

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