September 2007

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AFL Flash Chant: “Howard, time to go!” Pass it on!

29 September 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 4 comments

Here’s an idea. If inthemix.com.au could organize a Flash Rave at Sydney Town Hall yesterday with hundreds of people, it should be possible to organize a Flash Chant of “Howard, time to go!” during the AFL Grand Final this afternoon.

Here’s how:

  • Spread the word fast. We’ve 4 hours.
  • Focus on telling people in Melbourne, or who have friends in Melbourne, and AFL fans.
  • Spread the word using every social network you have — SMS, MySpace, Facebook, whatever. (But don’t spam people you know won’t be interested. Choose wisely.)
  • It’d be way cool if the chant was running once TV returned to the game after GetUp! screen their Climate Clever-er ad, or when John Howard was on screen. That means someone should organize someone who’s watching the game on TV to tell people at the ground when it happens. Have a brief trigger-word SMS ready to send instantly.
  • Everyone needs to be chanting the same thing: “Howard, time to go!”
  • If it’s loud enough, during a quiet part of the game, you get national TV coverage!

The crowd for Geelong versus Port Power will presumably have a working-class bias. Everyone will be hyped up for The Big Day anyway. It shouldn’t be too hard to make this happen.

I’ve just created flashchant.com so it’s easier to spread the word, too.

Update: The website has been online less than 2 hours and already it’s received 600 unique visitors. Scary.

Found Art: The Suspect’s Property

28 September 2007 in Found Art by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

The Suspect's Property

A new semi-regular feature, Gentle Readers. Found Art. Objects which I’ve stumbled across in the street.

Today, a Returned Property Docket from the NSW Police Service. It records in detail (and fairly poor typing) exactly what was being carried by S– when he was detained at the Newtown police station, and which was subsequently returned at 2.24am on a Saturday morning.

A life, in summary.

Don’t worry, S–, I’ve shredded the original. Though if you were concerned about your privacy you wouldn’t have thrown it into the street.

A Picture of a Ruddslide

28 September 2007 in Politics by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Mumble Poll Mix, 23 March to 23 September 2007

Earlier today I nearly choked. Despite Kevin Rudd making some minor tactical errors, despite squillions of our dollars being spent on government propaganda, Labor’s primary vote has reached its highest level since Kevin Rudd took over the leadership last year.

54%! Factor in preferences and that means the 2-party-preferred (2PP) vote is 60.5% to 39.5% Labor’s way. Astounding!

The graph (right) shows Peter Brent’s meta-analysis of all the major polls for the last six months. Clearly, all this talk of “a swing back to Howard” is crap. They’re just little wiggles in a much bigger picture that tells a very clear story.

There’s always a big gap in the middle of at least 10 percentage points.

Brent reckons the weighted aggregate 2PP vote is 56.5 to 43.5 in Labor’s favour. If so, Labor wins two-thirds of the seats in Parliament.

There’s lot more numbers and graphs at Mumble Elections and Possums Pollytics.

Train is coming! Train is coming!

28 September 2007 in Engineering, Marketing by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

A beautiful piece of advertising from… somewhere in Europe, I assume. I can’t quite make out the language. If the embedded video (below) doesn’t work, try this link.

Thanks to Alex Willemyns for the pointer — and for having the extremely good sense to link to my piece on Blackle. I totally agree with your point about bandwagons, Alex.

Climate Clever-er

28 September 2007 in Media, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Climate Clever-er TVC

GetUp! has raised over $200,000 to show this spoof TV advert during the AFL Grand Final tomorrow. It’s a send-up of the government’s glossy promo which tries to give the impression they’re doing something about climate change.

While it may not be screened many times during the game, I reckon the fact that “ordinary Australians” have chipped in to make it possible is newsworthy — which will in turn get the advert shown for free all over the place. Sweet.

Following news a month ago that it’s easy to hack into nuclear reactors, news that another experimental attack caused a generator to self-destruct. The US government and the power industry fear what might happen if such an attack were carried out on a larger scale. Thanks to Jan Whitaker for the pointer.

28 September 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

70% spam, situation normal

28 September 2007 in Internet by Stilgherrian | No comments

70% of the email processed by my business’ mail server is spam, at least according to this morning’s stats.

8990 messages Scanned by MailScanner
253.5 Total MB
6341 Spam messages detected by MailScanner
1117 Messages forwarded unscanned by MailScanner
8 Viruses found by MailScanner
18 Banned attachments found by MailScanner
401 Content Problems found by MailScanner
6361 Messages delivered by MailScanner

That’s pretty much the same as last year. And the vast majority of inbound email connections are rejected for being from known spam sources before they even get a chance to be processed by MailScanner!

IT/Internet election issues?

27 September 2007 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

For my sins, next Friday 5 October I’m covering for Crikey a panel discussion between ICT minister Senator Helen Coonan and her Labor counterpart Senator Stephen Conroy, in front of members of the Australian Computer Society.

What do you reckon the key IT, Internet, media and communications issues will be for this federal election?

For me, I think it’ll be facing the Raccoonan’s hairstyle at 0730. But maybe it’s, what? Broadband rollout? Protecting the kiddies on the Internet? Suggestions please!

Do you remember when whitegoods were actually white, not shiny stainless steel? Perhaps you can even remember when they were enamelled green?

27 September 2007 by Stilgherrian | No comments

Polite!

26 September 2007 in Arts, Photography, Sydney by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Photograph of people ignoring food

The food is laid out, ready to eat, but everyone’s waiting for someone else to make the first move.

This photo was taken at the close of the Marrickville Contemporary Art Prize exhibition on Sunday. Eventually the woman in the blue top sliced into the cheese — and suddenly the spell was broken!

’Pong tells me that in Thai, the very last piece on a plate is called “the polite piece” — the piece everyone is too polite to take.

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