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The 9pm Edict #15

14 December 2011 in The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | No comments

The 9pm EdictWorld’s most impatient meth cook found in Oklahoma. She couldn’t even wait to get home. Australians are self-obsessed entitled wankers. And won’t someone think of the children? Senator Conroy dropped the f-bomb on national television!

I think he did it deliberately. Watch the video and see for yourself.

Also, Australians are a bunch of wankers with an inflated sense of entitlement.

We are the richest people in the world. And, as Possum of Possum’s Pollytics explained in Crikey last Thursday, we lead the world in everything from decent minimum wages to economic growth over the past decade. Read that article. Please. And while you’re at it, see where you sit on the Global Rich List.

We also hear about the world’s most impatient meth dealer.

You can listen below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

[Update 16 December 2011: My comments about Senator Conroy's f-bomb have sparked some interest. If you're after that bit, it starts exactly 11 minutes into the program.]

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:19 — 17.5MB)

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.]

ABC: The only NBN monopoly seems to be on ignorance

27 June 2011 in Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Over at ABC’s The Drum opinion website, I’ve written a piece that argues the National Broadband Network won’t kill competition in the telco industry.

They did the headline, not me, but I do like it.

The article explains the structure of the telco industry before getting to the key points.

In most parts of Australia, the only CAN [customer access network] has been Telstra’s copper network. The NBN will replace that with NBN Co’s optical fibre CAN — at least for 93% of the population, roughly any location with a population of 1000 or more. In other words, the NBN replaces an ageing CAN that’s reaching the limits of its capacity technically, with a new one that provides vastly increased capacity for the future.

What doesn’t change is the fact that customers, both domestic and business, can still choose whichever retail telco offers the best deal for them. That is, there’s still the same capacity for competition between telcos. The only difference is that those retail telcos are provisioning their services via NBN Co fibre rather than Telstra copper.

[I give a few examples and then...]

[T]o claim that telco competition will end because of an “NBN monopoly” is as silly as claiming there’s no competition in the road transport industry because everyone has to use the same monopoly public-funded roads. Different freight companies use those same roads to deliver different styles of service at different prices, and competition seems healthy enough.

The Australian Communications Consumers Action Network just described it as the most factually accurate piece they’ve seen in weeks. That’s flattering but seems over the top. But I will say that I’m happy the article — particularly as this morning broadcast radio arsehole Alan Jones is claiming the exact opposite. And we know what he’s like with facts.

There’s also an article by Alan Kohler that analyses the Telstra-NBN deal from a financial perspective. Well worth a read.

Talking Bitcoin and digital currency on ABC 774 Melbourne

25 June 2011 in Conversations, Internet, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Bitcoin hit the news this week when it was alleged that an ABC employee had been using their computers to generate the digital currency.

On Thursday I gave this backgrounder to the ABC’s Lindy Burns. And yes, she did pronounce my name incorrectly. Her producer has had words.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:05 — 3.5MB)

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but it hasn’t been posted on their website so here it is. In return, I reckon you might choose to listen to Lindy Burns’ drive program next week.

Return of the Hallucinating Goldfish: Help!

30 October 2010 in Hallucinating Goldfish, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

“My preferred term is that we’re governed by Hallucinating Goldfish. No long-term memory, and a world of imagined horrors,” I said last night.

My comment was triggered by a discussion about Australia’s debt-to-GDP ratio, which stands at 6%. Here’s a picture from March 2010, showing that even with the recent rise in debt to deal with the global financial crisis our government is debt still within the usual range historically.

Personal debt, on the other hand… Ahem!

The United States, by comparison, sits at 60%. According to one economist even that figure is wrong. It’s really 14 times greater, and he reckons the US is actually bankrupt.

But opposition parties here in Australia screech that 6% is “out of control” — even though, as Ric Hayman reminded me, it’s only a few years since one of their own was congratulated for settling things down to 6%. It was acceptable then. But now…

A debt ratio at 6% of GDP is nothing, of course. To use the traditional analogy, it’s like a household with a combined income of $100,000 taking out a loan of $6000. Quite manageable. Families regularly take out loans of 500% of their GDP to buy their own homes and it’s considered normal, even admirable.

Yes yes, if they spent that money on cocaine instead then might be different, but that’s not the issue here. Anyone who tries to equate stabilising a national economy so people can keep their jobs with a drug habit is in my opinion nothing more than a blind political tribalist. If such comments are made here I shall mock and insult you personally.

This is all part of what my Crikey colleague Bernard Keane calls the Perpetual Present of politics, “in which what happened two days ago, let alone two years ago, is forgotten”. But my preferred term is Hallucinating Goldfish

That must’ve struck a chord, because when I mentioned it last night my comment was retweeted around 30 times. I therefore pointed people to my original post, Post 801: Kill the Hallucinating Goldfish.

I was also reminded that political journalism fails to cover the vast majority of what happens in Parliament and government.

As Tim Dunlop put it, here’s “some stuff you might’ve missed if you relied on the media for all your information.” Like the House passing 29 bills, the Senate 16, and 11 bills passing both houses. Nothing important there, eh?

Quite.

Now my original Hallucinating Goldfish post now seems quite dated, and I haven’t posted anything in the Hallucinating Goldfish category in most than two and a half years. I reckon we need new examples. This is where you come in.

Please help me identify more Hallucinating Goldfish. Where are policies being proposed, or decisions being made, based on a paranoid fantasy worldview and ignoring the lessons of the past?

[Photo: Goldfish by Helga Birna Jónasdóttir, used under a Creative Commons attribution license.]

The 9pm Edict #11

22 April 2010 in Politics, The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | 5 comments

The 9pm EdictA criminal is dead, and Australian media dances on his grave. Another man dies after being chucked out of the country — but he’s a criminal too, so who cares? And something about a volcano and aeroplanes.

After a ridiculously long break, here is episode 11 of The 9pm Edict. Enjoy.

You can listen to this episode below. But if you want them all, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

Play

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:36 — 6.5MB)

For more information about the topics covered in this episode, check out how the Victorian government may have to pay compensation for the death in prison of Carl Williams, the bizarre case against Christine Nixon, the federal government’s changes to refugee processing, Tony Abbott’s border protection truck, how Australia leads the global economic recovery, and the sad tale of Andrew Moore.

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 9pm Edict #8

24 March 2010 in Internet, Politics, The 9pm Edict by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

The 9pm EdictGoogle 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.

Play

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.]

Links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009

18 November 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Stilgherrian’s links for 08 November 2009 through 18 November 2009:

See what happens when you don’t curate your links for ten days, during which time there’s a conference which generates a bazillion things to link to? Sigh.

This is such a huge batch of links that I’ll start them over the fold. They’re not all about Media140 Sydney, trust me.

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Links for 30 September 2009 through 13 October 2009

12 October 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 30 September 2009 through 13 October 2009, gathered automatically but then left to languish for two weeks before publication.

There’s so many of these links this time that I’ll publish them over the fold. I think I need to get over my fear of the link being published automatically without my checking them first, and my concern that my website won’t look nice if the first post is just a list of links.

Maybe I should just stick these Delicious-generated links in a sidebar? Or do you like having them in the main stream and RSS feed?

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Links for 12 September 2009 through 19 September 2009

19 September 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 1 comment

Here are the web links I’ve found for 12 September 2009 through 19 September 2009, posted not-quite-automatically.

Links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009

08 September 2009 in Daily Links by del.icio.us | 2 comments

Stilgherrian’s links for 28 August 2009 through 09 September 2009, gathered automatically and then forgotten until today:

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