Google takes on China. Internet heavies and clueful people rip into Australia’s mandatory censorship plan. And Senator Conroy says he will release the NBN report… in May.
Here is episode 8 of The 9pm Edict.
You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:22 — 6.0MB)
For more information about tonight’s rant, you can check out my story for Crikey about Refused Classification, the Facebook sacking of Chelsea Taylor, a Google News search for Google versus China and Tony Abbott’s victory speech.
And here’s the story about the National Broadband Network report which I didn’t cover.
If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.
[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]
The final Abbott sequence manifested images in my mind of Abbott and Rudd in the Colosseum, brandishing short swords and sporting chain mail armour. “Bring on the lions!” cries the Governor. “Flood the stadium!” shouts the crowd.
Yes. I think that would be fun.
So an NBN report release in May — let’s say May 31, the Senate has delayed the ETS debate until May and an Obama visit in June — early June, say. I reckon a pattern’s emerging here, providing a clearer picture of when a double dissolution election is likely to occur. What’s more, we’ll be in winter and the budgie smugglers will dare not venture out in those conditions during an election campaign, as the temperatures can be most unedifying to one’s manliness.
Your edict needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated. It is a message that cannot be said often enough by too many people. To wit, I close off with a quote from John Ralston Saul:
“As with our earlier worship of saints and facts, there is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting. The message of the competition/efficiency/marketplace Trinity seems to be that we should drop the idea of ourselves developed over two and a half millennia. We are no longer beings distinguished by our ability to think and to act consciously in order to affect our circumstances. Instead we should passively submit ourselves and our whole civilization — our public structures, social forms and cultural creativity — to the abstract forces of unregulated commerce. It may be that most citizens have difficulty with the argument and would prefer to continue working on the idea of dignified human intelligence. If they must drop something, they would probably prefer to drop the economists. “
I wonder why it is that your 9pm Edict announcements show up in my Google Reader RSS feed twice. They’ve done it every time so far, but nothing else you post does. Weird. And no, I haven’t subscribed twice, and they’re both pointing here.
@Sylmobile: Senator Conroy has said he would release the report “before the Budget”. The Budget session of Parliament runs from Tuesday 11 May all the way to, um, Thursday 13 May. According to the current parliamentary schedule the House or Representatives then sits 24 to 31 May while the Senate does Estimates committee sessions at that time.
It’s a 500-page report. There are many, many other documents to be dealt with in those few days. By saying he’ll release the NBN report “before the Budget”, Conroy isn’t demonstrating transparency, he’s demonstrating an attempt to overload his opponents.
@Eric TF Bat: I cannot explain your symptoms. As for your difficulties with the RSS feed, well, the feed validates OK. However the posts which have podcast episodes attached have a whole lot of iTunes-related XML in them. But surely Google would be able to parse that OK? The XML is produced automatically by a mature WordPress plug-in…