A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets and in the media and so on and so forth.

Articles

• Fairfax’s hypocritical web ‘spying devices’ beat-up, for Crikey. The “spying devices” in question are tracking cookies. Nothing new there. But the story was on the front page of the dead-tree slices. Why? Apparently politicians’ websites use tracking cookies. Shock! Horror! And Fairfax uses even more of them. Hypocrites.
• Senate to re-open bloggers versus journalists, for Crikey. A lightly-edited version of my blog post on the same topic.
• Indonesian e-commerce held back by uncertain laws, for Crikey. Based on material presented by leading Indonesian legal academic Dr Sinta Dewi.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 64, “The info commissioner’s fight: Govt 2.0″. My interview with the new Australian Information Commissioner, Professor John McMillan. The new Office of the Australian Information Commissioner came into being on 1 November and represents a significant change to the way the Australian Government will be handing its information — especially given the Declaration of Open Government earlier this year.

Media Appearances

• On Monday I spoke with Fiona Wyllie on ABC Radio’s Statewide Afternoons and the Fairfax tracking cookie beat-up and a father who installed a radio jammer to kill the internet so his kids wouldn’t spend so much time online. Alas, there is no recording. That’s a shame. It’s not often you’ll hear me giving parenting advice on the radio.

Geekery

• I learned how to use Google Site Search by plugging it into the Fender Australia website. It’s fairly straightforward, but it quickly shows you the problems with how your site is constructed. As an aside, if you’re a web developer visiting that site for the first time you’ll be horrified to see that in many places it uses tables for layout. That’s because the site was originally built in 2001 and has just been re-skinned a couple of times since. It’s also maintained manually, all 950 pages of it. There’s little business case for a major overhaul — the numbers are not compelling — but we’re planning to build a proper modern database-driven site early in 2011.

Corporate Largesse

None.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Old bar sign at the Town Hall Hotel, Newtown. Gender roles were a little different back then.]

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?

• INFOWAR vs. CORPORATIONS | Global Guerrillas: John Robb’s essay outlines a potential strategy for conducting infowar against corporations — most of which looks to me like it’d be illegal. I suppose that’s what war is about, eh? The comments stream is somewhat amusing.
• “Artists Should Be Compensated For Their Work” | QuestionCopyright.org: Nina Paley’s controversial-looking essay which posits that artists are not entitled to be paid for their art, only for their work. She’s using these and other terms in quite specific ways, so it’s worth reading carefully before passing judgement.
• Post-Medium Publishing | Paul Graham: In amongst the various current discussions of charging for news content online, Paul Graham makes an important point. “Consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were selling, why has the price of books or music or movies always depended mostly on the format? Why didn’t better content cost more?”
• Americans on Tailored Advertising: DO NOT WANT | denialism blog: No, Americans do not want tailored advertising on the Internet, even less so when told how their activities are monitored to make it work.
• A Cold War Conundrum: The 1983 Soviet War Scare | Central Intelligence Agency: This eminently readable CIA monograph puts the Stanislav Petrov incident into perspective, explaining how and why the Soviet leadership feared a US first strike.
• The Man Who Prevented WWIII | DivineCaroline: In 1983, Stanislav Petrov was in charge of Soviet monitoring systems watching the US for signs of a nuclear first strike. One night he chose not to react to an alert, suspecting it was a false alarm. He was right, and a potential global nuclear exchange was avoided.
• The Fiction Generator | Wondermark: The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000 makes writers’ chores a breeze!
• Against Transparency | The New Republic: This essay on the perils of some “open government” initiatives is a pleasantly nuanced read.
• Michael Wolff on Rupert Murdoch | vanityfair.com: Wolff wrote a biography of Murdoch, and presumably knows the man. My take on this fascinating article is that the old guy simply doesn't understand what’s happening online, perhaps because you can inoly understand the online world if you participate in it.
• The News Manual: A free resource for journalists, would-be journalists, educators and people interested in the media. It was developed from a three-volume book The News Manual, published with the help of UNESCO as a practical guide to people entering the profession and to support mid-career journalists wanting to improve their skills.
• Televising Court Proceedings | SSRN: A 1993 paper by Ian Ramsay, then of the University of Melbourne Law School, setting out the main arguments for and against televising the proceedings of courts, and suggests an experimental program to evaluate the arguments in practice.
• The Law of Defamation | Arts Law Centre of Australia: A good introductory overview of how Australia’s tough anti-defamation laws work.
• chiropractic – The Skeptic’s Dictionary: When I was pointed to this article critical of chiropractic, I noted that it used some fallacious arguments which Science itself would not permit. I’m tagging it as an example of the hypocrisy of some perhaps only a few?) bold defenders of Science because it may form the basis of a future post.
• 55 Twitter tips | SmartCompany: While many of these tips for business aren’t entirely new, it’s a reasonable-enough compilation.
• Captain Kirk has taken too much fucking LSD | DoseNation: A nice bit o’music editing by Fall On Your Sword.
• How to Publish a Magazine in a Day and a Half | Derek Powazek: Powazek published a photomag of images from Sydney’s dust storm, sourced from Flickr, without leaving his California base. This is a great step-by-step how-to.
• A history of the English marriage | Telegraph: It seems many of our current “norms” about marriage were invented by the Victorians.
• MoD “How to stop leaks” guide leaks | The Register: In a supreme act of irony, the UK’s Ministry of Defence document Defence Manual of Security has been leaked into Wikileaks. All 2300 pages.
• Twitter and the norm police | Woolly Days: Derek Barry sums up a recent discussion on Twitter, defamation and what constitutes “publication”. I’m tagging it because I want to respond at some point.
• Mash-up: A Short History of the Media Future | The Monthly: While perhaps not completely groundbreaking, this essay by John Birmingham is an excellent backgrounder on the issues facing traditional media companies.
• AUSTLANG: A new database of Australian indigenous languages, cross-linked to Google Maps.
• Uncle Bobby’s Wedding | myliblog: An American library was asked to remove or restrict access to a children’s book about gay relationships. The librarian wrote a detailed and well-reasoned response explaining why it stays.
• Guidelines for Secure Use of Social Media by Federal Departments and Agencies | Chief Information Officers Council: What it says. The first version of new rules for US federal agencies.
• Hyperconnectivity | Wikipedia: The term “hyperconnectivity” now has its own Wikipedia entry. Where’s mine?
• 99 Led Balloons: Social Media Blunders | digitalOZ: A nice list of classic social media traps for young players. A shame 90% of businesses entering the world of social media will end up making quite a few of them.
• The Moguls’ New Clothes | The Atlantic: There is much sense in this analysis of Big Media and how that Internet thing is changing everything.
• Eureka moments | The Economist: How the mobile phone became a key tool for third-world development.
• jQuery Carousel: This is the code that Jeff Waugh used for the rotating carousel of featured stories on the Crikey home page. He reckons he wouldn’t necessarily use it again. But this is my bookmark.

• Who is Fake Stephen Conroy? Full list of Suspects. | Amnesia Blog: Speculation about who Fake Stephen Conroy really is. Are they getting warm?
• How the US forgot how to make Trident missiles | The Sunday Herald: Plans to refurbish Trident nuclear weapons had to be put on hold because US scientists forgot how to manufacture a component of the warhead. Complex manufacturing process do need to be maintained.
• Historically Bad Ideas in Software | Bex Huff: A great conversation-starter. Just because something sounds good in theory, in isolation, doesn’t mean it’ll be good value in the long run.
• Privacy in the Age of Persistence | Schneier on Security: “Data is the pollution of the information age. It’s a natural byproduct of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after effects are toxic. And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we’re ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.” Bruce Schneier has written about this before, but this is one of the tightest explanations I’ve seen.
• How to Twitter | WSJ.com: One journalist’s first cut at explaining Twitter to a non-Twitter audience. I’m amused by the observation that you’ll get more followers if you actually say something. Well, yes.
• Okay, this is going to hurt… | Winnipeg Free Press: One journalist’s take on the “controversy” following political blogger Policy Frog’s decision to do commentary in the “mainstream media”.
• The Evolution of Life in 60 Seconds | YouTube: Exactly what it says. Personally, I’d have presented it with images rather than words. Maybe that’s a project for me for another time.

• Information Commissioner Richard Thomas warns of surveillance culture | Times Online: Laws that allow officials to monitor the behaviour of millions of Britons risk “hardwiring surveillance” into the British way of life, the country’s privacy watchdog has warned.
• Porn in the USA: Conservatives are biggest consumers | New Scientist: “Some of the people who are most outraged turn out to be consumers of the very things they claimed to be outraged by,” says researcher Benjamin Edelman.
• Chatham House Rule | Wikipedia: A rule for running a meeting where people can speak freely but their confidentiality is respected. The rule itself is: “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.” The Wikipedia article gives the background.
• Australian Internet Filtering Debate at Kickstart 2009 | Midnight Update: A video of the Internet Filtering debate at Kickstart 09 from the weekend, including Bernadette McMenamin from Child Wise, Anthony Pillion from Webshield, Geordie Guy from EFA, and Mark Newton. I’ll write more upon this later, maybe.
• Internet Study 2007 | ipoque: A report on the impact of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, Voice over IP, Skype, Joost, instant messaging, media streaming such as YouTube, from a traffic point of view.

• Winners gallery 2009 | World Press Photo: What it says. As always, some very fine photojournalism.
• Twitter is the new cat poo | First Blog on the Moon: Crikey cartoonist First Dog on the Moon has written a brilliant piece about Twitter and what might be called Twitterwhoring. Something he’s rather good at himself.
• Victorian Bushfire Events | Premier of Victoria, Australia: A map of local fundraising events for the Victorian bushfires, the worst natural disaster in Australia’s history, put together with help from a little firm called Google.
• Crisis of Credit : clusterflock: A nice animated film by Jonathan Jarvis showing how we got into the Global Financial Crisis. Some people have called is a “visualisation”. It’s not, as the imagery isn’t a proper mapping of the data, but it does help explain.
• Where Clive Hamilton accuses me of trying to silence him | Websinthe: A bizarre story, this. Clive Hamilton confuses a call for better accountability with an attempt to silence him. It’d be funny, except that Hamilton gets unfettered access to major media in Australia, wrapping himself in a university’s cloak of respectability as he makes his pronouncements, and then proceeds to ignore the valid criticisms put to him.
• ‘Sexting’, teen culture, technology, scandal | Salon Life: “What’s more disturbing — that teens are texting each other naked pictures of themselves, or that it could get them branded as sex offenders for life?” Apart from portraying sexually healthy youths as “hormonally haywire teenagers” and a few other tabloid clichés, this article clearly outlines the problem of current child pornography laws in the context of pervasive digital media.

Since Wallace promotes himself as a representative of good Christian values, I’ll allow that he may just be ignorant rather than a deliberate liar. Ignorance is no sin: it can be cured with knowledge. But he does use the familiar fraudulent propaganda techniques: misrepresenting his opponents; cherry-picking numbers; failing to explore the implications of those numbers; citing the same suspect Australia Institute report; and wrapping it up in the same old “protect the children” cant.

Those of us who’ve been covering this issue for more than a year now are getting sick of responding to the same easily-rebutted debating tricks. But, as I keep saying, politics is a marathon event. So if Jim’s rolling out the same material, we’ll point out the same flaws.

Again.

Wallace starts, as is traditional, by painting a distorted picture of filtering’s critics.

It will be the downfall of the internet, the end of free speech as we know it. It will lull parents into a false sense of security, and it doesn’t even work.

But just as students are taught not to believe everything they read on the internet, so should we not believe everything said about it. Some things are too important to leave to drown in a pool of misinformation, and internet filtering is one of them.

Wallace’s propaganda technique here is the straw man. He mentions some genuine criticisms (the false sense of security and that the filter won’t work), but massively over-states others (the “downfall of the internet” and “end of free speech”). You’ll see this technique used over and over again in politics. Add “drowning in a pool” to imply a flood (i.e. lots) of falsehoods and danger, and you’ve got a powerful emotional frame.

The actual arguments are that filtering may well degrade Internet performance, and that it’s a risk to free speech because the proposal hasn’t been properly defined. That latter point is why even ultra-conservative Senator Cory Bernardi opposes the scheme.

There’s also the point — which Wallace doesn’t even mention — that the filter may not be the most efficient use of the taxpayers’ money. If we’re talking about preventing child abuse, for example, the money would achieve more if it went to the police.

The opponents of the filter are engaged in a constant dialog to inform each other, and link back to well-researched material like Irene Graham’s Libertus.net. The proponents of filtering rarely cite references, except for one: the Australia Institute’s 2003 report Youth and Pornography in Australia: Evidence on the extent of exposure and likely effects [PDF] by Clive Hamilton and Michael Flood. It’s hardly a neutral source. Hamilton has been the key promoter of mandatory Internet filtering — indeed, there seems to be something highly personal happening there — and the arguments he uses are remarkably similar to those Jim Wallace uses today. And Hamilton hired Newspoll to conduct the survey: they’ve got form for push-polling.

There doesn’t seem to be any research from neutral sources to back the claims that “93 per cent of parents of 12- to 17-year-olds” want automatic filtering of the Internet. And even if there were, the fact that people want something to exist doesn’t mean it can exist.

I’d like to live forever, as it happens, and so would plenty of others. But it ain’t going to happen.

There doesn’t seem to be any social research supporting the filter’s proponents’ views which is less than half a decade out of date. That’s an awfully long time if we’re talking about people’s attitudes to the Internet.

Wallace doesn’t like the GetUp! campaign, perhaps because it’s raised about $50,000 and their petition has been signed by 95,000 people. That cuts out the “extremist libertarian” spin: 95,000 people looks pretty goddam mainstream.

The activist group GetUp!, for example, has raised a petition with the alarmist statement that filtering “will slow the internet by up to 87 per cent”, but the claim is based solely on the worst results of the products trialled.

It conveniently omits to advise would-be signatories that the trial results released in mid-2008 showed another of the filter products tested slowed internet performance by less than 2 per cent, and three products slowed it by less than 30 per cent.

GetUp!’s 87% figure might be alarming, but it is from the government’s own Phase 1 trials, the lab test conducted in the first half of 2008. Here’s their report again: Closed Environment Testing of ISP-Level Internet Content Filters [PDF], and here’s my original discussion.

Wallace himself “conveniently omits to advise” that the filters which “only” degraded performance less than 2% were also those with the most appalling false positive rate. Yes, he’s accusing others of cherry-picking numbers, but does exactly the same himself. I believe that’s called “hypocrisy”.

He also repeats the lie that…

From the outset, it has been clear this system is not going to stop any adult from viewing anything that is legal.

Not true. It’s far from clear. Words like “illegal” and “unwanted” and “inappropriate” and “harmful” have been jumbled together. Again, Irene Graham has documented the shifts in AU Gov’t Mandatory ISP Filtering / Censorship Plan.

As I wrote in November:

[We can] read for ourselves, on page 2, that the tests covered “technology to filter illegal or inappropriate content”, and on page 21 how the test sites included those rated PG, M, MA… Despite Conroy’s repeated assertion, the tests explicitly included perfectly legal material.

As we’ve said many times, even if filtering is limited to the ACMA blacklist, that blacklist contains much more than “illegal” material, as Irene Graham has already explained in Australia’s Internet Censorship System. Adding the undefined term “inappropriate” makes it clear that the plans intend to go beyond the merely illegal.

And, as I wrote on Friday, ACMA has already added perfectly legal political material to the blacklist.

Given all these points, of which Jim Wallace seems to be ignorant, wilfully or otherwise, there is only one conclusion:

Even if the proposed mandatory filter only blocks the ACMA blacklist, that will block material which is legal for adults to view, and that will potentially block political content.

Wallace also falls for a classic trap in numerical analysis — or deliberately hopes that his readers will — when he uses figures like “less than 3 per cent” for the false-positive rate and imagines this is good performance. Again, as I wrote in November:

As Crikey has reported (Tuesday, 9 July 2008, Internet filters a success, if success = failure) [local copy], even the best filter has a false-positive rate of 3% under ideal lab conditions. That might not sound much, but Mark Newton (the network engineer who Conroy’s office tried to bully last week) reckons that for a medium-sized ISP that’s 3000 incorrect blocks every second. Another maths-heavy analysis says that every time that filter blocks something there’s an 80% chance it was wrong.

If Jim Wallace isn’t addressing this analysis, it’s either because he’s choosing to (in which case he’s failing to address one of the key issues) or he’s unaware of it (in which case he’s uninformed and not competent to be taking part in this debate).

Two paragraphs near the end of Wallace’s piece illustrate another technique. Quoting the Hamilton & Flood report, he says:

“Eighty-four per cent of boys and 60 per cent of girls say they have been exposed accidentally to sex sites on the internet and two in five boys deliberately use the internet to see sexually explicit material, with 4 to 5 per cent doing so frequently …

“There are special concerns regarding violent and extreme material on the internet including depictions of non-consenting sexual acts such as rape and bestiality.”

The propaganda trick here is that the figures he quotes refer to “sexually explicit material”, but by tacking on the “rape and bestiality” comment he creates a false connection — that the figures refer to this substantially more disturbing but much rarer material.

Curiously enough, rape and bestiality are precisely the two examples Hamilton used in his ABC News opinion piece in November. Who’s coordinating whose talking points here?

Wallace also fails to mention that while the earlier figures were about the parents of 12- to 17-year-olds, the figures he’s here using relate to 16- to 17-year-olds only. Wallace is either careless with his writing, or he’s deliberately misleading us into thinking that children as young as 12 are “frequently” seeing this material.

Will Jim Wallace address the actual arguments being put forward? Or will he continue to repeat these same disingenuous talking points?

Stilgherrian Live, my live Internet program, returns tomorrow night, and I need nominations for this week’s “Cnut of the Week”.

If you missed the last two episodes, well, the segment “Cnut of the Week” is dedicated to the memory of King Cnut the Great, also known as Canute, a Viking ruler of England and Denmark, and Norway, and of some of Sweden variously from 1016 to 1035 CE.

Cnut is best known for attempting to hold back the tide. As 12th-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon tells it, Cnut set his throne on the shore and commanded the tide to halt — but of course it didn’t stop. Cnut leapt back and said:

Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.

He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix, and never wore it again.

This story about Cnut may not be true, and it’s really praising the greatness of the Christian God whom I do not worship. But I prefer the other interpretation: that Cnut staged the scene to rebuke the flattery of his courtiers, and to demonstrate that the forces of nature are mightier than any mere human.

In Stilgherrian Live, I nominate as “Cnut of the Week” people who futilely resist the forces of change.

I’m particularly interested in examples of trying to hold back the changes brought by the Internet, with its greater connectivity, transparency and democracy. And you get to vote.

In episode 7, for example, I nominated Senator Stephen Conroy for trying to filter “bad stuff” from the Internet, a sea cucumber (don’t ask!), NSW Premier Morris Iemma for being a Pointless Cnut generally, and the entire government of China for their oppressive censorship — with China as the clear winner.

In episode 8, commentator Greg Barns won with his call for Facebook, MySpace and other social media websites to moderate all of their content, beating consultant Dan Kaminsky who dared tell us that the Internet isn’t secure (fighting the tide of ignorance-is-bliss) and the commissioner of the Australian Federal Police, Mick Keelty, for persisting in the persecution of Mohammed Haneef in the face of an overwhelming lack of evidence.

So, who do you nominate this week, and why?

Unfortunately he’s been saying it for years too, so maybe I got it from him and then forgot.

Anyway, in Writing Style for Print vs Web he says:

I’ve spent many columns explicating the differences between the Web and television, which can be summarized as lean-forward vs. lean-back:

• On the Web, users are engaged and want to go places and get things done. The Web is an active medium.
• While watching TV, viewers want to be entertained. They are in relaxation mode and vegging out; they don’t want to make choices. TV is a passive medium.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t have entertaining websites or informative TV shows. But it does mean that the two media’s contrasting styles require different approaches to entertainment and education.

The differences between print and the Web may not seem as strong, but to achieve optimal results, each requires a distinct content style.

The very useful article then gives examples and good advice before spruiking his $1000+ per day seminars.

Nielsen is a smart man — though he isn’t always right on everything, as some of his fans believe. Still, if you’re considering the audience’s needs (and shouldn’t you always be doing that?) he’s spot on.

Of course I’m a complete hypocrite, because some of my posts have 1000 words of straight text. Rules were made to be broken.

In The Age today, author and lawyer Dr Mirko Bagaric reckons the ultimate test of character is when a person has unchecked power. “That is why at work you can get a pretty good gauge of the character of your bosses but not your underlings,” he says. “They are too busy being nice to you to try to get ahead.”

So what does Bagaric make of the many, many reports of public servants complaining that Rudd has turned their lives into a “nightmare” through overwork? Bagaric says, “Rudd has spectacularly failed the exploitation test.”

In a well-argued essay, Bagaric writes:

One trait is even more offensive than using others: hypocrisy. Trying to get credit for what you are the opposite of, is an egregious insult to fundamental tenets of natural justice.

Before the last election, Rudd said he empathised with the plight of time-pressed working families and that he recognised the need to restore “fairness into the workplace”. The 60,000 people who make up the federal public service are every bit as entitled to be treated with respect as the rest of the community.

Yes, helping the PM run the country is an important job, but we are not in a war zone. There is no demonstrated need for people to work manic hours, no major crisis; and the PM’s ideas and effectiveness deficits don’t constitute a catalyst for anyone else grinding themselves into the Canberra dirt.

So, what should the PM expect of his troops? He should be telling them exactly what social scientists have known for decades about the connection between employment and leading a fulfilled life. Work is important to leading a fulfilling life, but rarely should you let it define you (unless you are genuinely passionate about it), and it certainly should never defeat you.

Moreover, more is often less. There are only so many productive hours (about eight) that one can consistently complete each day. Anything beyond that is just about presenteeism — looking to do something instead of actually doing it. It has nothing to do with effectiveness.

Spending time reflecting, contemplating, revisiting decisions, redrafting, consulting with others is usually dead time. There’s a lot of truth in the observation of former Nine chief executive Sam Chisholm that “losers have meetings, winners party”.

I’ve been in my own self-induced schedule crunch this week, and have yet to reflect on Rudd’s first six months in office. But as I emerge and see what others have been writing, I’m not impressed. Just don’t get me started on the Bil Henson saga!

Of all the writing about the 5th anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, one of the more interesting pieces is by Mary Ellen O’Connell (pictured) of Notre Dame Law School. In Learning from the Iraq War: The Wisdom of International Law, she argues that the most tangible lesson is that the US ignores international law at its peril.

Going into Iraq, we ignored the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force except in self-defense or with Security Council authorization. Once in Iraq, we ignored the Hague Regulations, requiring us to put a stop to looting and to make only necessary changes to local law and government. We ignored the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit secret detention and abuse of prisoners of the kind we saw at Abu Ghraib.

The talk on Iraq is all about what went wrong, whether the surge is working, and when we can get out. We hear virtually nothing about international law and look set to repeat our mistakes. Violating the law has cost our nation and Iraq dearly. It has denied us the guidance of rules based on long experience and moral consensus. We have lost standing in the world, a literal fortune, and precious lives. Rather than internalizing the lesson of law violation in Iraq, we continue to defy the law in serious and self-destructive ways.

At some point, sooner or later, America needs to understand that international law does indeed apply to everyone — including America. Otherwise any US action against any other nation breaking the law is nothing but hypocrisy. (Hat-tip to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.)

You’d think that Abercrombie and Fitch, who use imagery of the shirtless male throughout their marketing, would appreciate a few more shirtless men, right? Apparently not.

New York-based Improv Everywhere, who cause “scenes of chaos and joy in public places”, placed 115 shirtless men in A&F’s store on 5th Avenue.

After about 15 minutes… security employees started approaching all of our men and asking them to either put a shirt on or leave. They informed us that the model was a paid employee and his state of undress didn’t justify ours. So despite the fact that the store constantly bombards you with the image of the shirtless male, Abercrombie still maintains a “No Shirts; No Service” policy. Some agents protested that they were trying to buy a shirt, but the staff countered with the not-so-logical, “If you put on a shirt then you can buy a shirt”…

Two agents were actually stopped while in the process of checking out! They were waiting in line for 10 minutes to buy some $45 shirts, only to be grabbed at the register. One of them was in the process of handing over his credit card as he was nabbed and informed he wasn’t allowed to make a purchase!

There’s plenty of photos and videos, some of which are quite, erm, scenic if you’re so inclined.

Of the various controversies about Hillsong, two stand out for me:

• Fundamentalism is A Very Bad Thing, whether it’s about Islam, Christianity, Marxism, Free Market Economics, wind power generation or whether the milk goes in first. The Church of Virus lists Dogmatism as one of the Three Senseless Sins, and while CoV is somewhat tongue in cheek it’s nevertheless spot on. Fundamentalism denies individual thought or adaptation to changing circumstances. Fundamentalism is nothing more than intellectual bullying: “I will tell you what to think.” This is dangerous. When people cease to think for themselves they become slaves. Hillsong is a Fundamentalist organisation: internal debate is not permitted.
• Prosperity Theology is a hypocritical perversion of what that Joshua bar Joseph bloke was actually saying. OK, the gold-plated silk-clad parasites of the Vatican aren’t exactly a shining example of his teachings either. But to appropriate the Jesus brand and leave out all the difficult bits is a lot like that Che Guevara t-shirt as a symbol of enlightened rebellion.

Now I’m all for freedom of religion. Please, everybody, think for yourselves and decide your own beliefs! That’s a fundamental human right. I support you in your endeavours. But another fundamental right is freedom of speech. I get to say why I think you’re wrong (and vice versa), and out of that interchange some glorious new synthesis might arise.

Hillsong denies those fundamental human rights to its own members — by suppressing thought through Fundamentalism and suppressing free speech by denying dissent.

Pinky Beecroft, the sometimes-scrambled former lead singer of Machine Gun Fellatio, has been attending Hillsong and wrote about it for Manic Times. Long, but packed with ironic observations.

If it’s all about Jesus, why is The Big Screen usually full of imagery of the band or, especially, the pastors? Why is there a raised-arm gesture that we all recall from movies about WWII? Why are so many of the messages about people who’ve had their lives changed once they decided to write a cheque?

Pinky gets deeper into “the vibe” when he moves to Hillsong’s mothership at Baulkham Hills…

It’s incredibly like an Eskimo Joe gig except that the music’s hookier and there are more females at Hills, with the vast majority of them quite hot-looking.

Outside, there’s a sausage sizzle, hot coffee and lots of space to hang out and chat to other Hillsongers. In the last few weeks it’s mostly just been Hey, how’re you doin’? and stuff like that, the odd chat about mobile phone plans, harder to understand than God himself, and one weird conversation with a 21-year-old redhead girl who confessed to me “Hillsong makes me so excited, I always want to have sex with my girlfriend straight after.” We swapped phone numbers. True story.

… and eventually he’s gripped by a life-changing revelation.

I can see a future, for the first time in years. I think I’ve been really depressed, for a long time now, with my career in trouble and my finances mostly non-existent. Too old for record companies, too weird for radio, too thin to be the next John Farnham.

But here at Hillsong, none of that matters. I’m a champion. I’ve been worried that I would be too old to fit in, or not conservative enough, or that my voice is not sufficiently trained. But now I think maybe I’ll be OK. Maybe I don’t have to be young and beautiful. It occurs to me: this is not some fascist organisation, leeching the tax-payer, run by evil, youth-exploiting despots — that’s in Ultimo, and it’s called Triple J.

Pinky’s article triggered lots of thoughts. Some of them led to this essay. Others led to a question. I’ve discovered that one of my business clients is owned by a Hillsonger. By helping that business, I’m helping 10% of its profits go to a “church” which, if not exactly evil, is at least an organisation which I do not wish to support. What should I do?

Happy Sunday. God Bless. Merry Meet. All Hail Eris.

…autocratic managers and the dark side of management consultancy have discovered how to keep their penny and still eat the bun.

The way it works is this. You spend a lot of money putting in control systems based on idealised process flows and ways of working. This applies in customer relationship management and health & safety alike along with many other fields. It looks really good on the flow charts. However the day to day reality of dealing with customers, or doing the job (say on an oil rig) means that people have to break the rules. Your business depends on their doing so and as long as it has a good outcome you ignore it. However if something goes wrong, you bring out that rule book and the idealised model and now you have someone to blame: the poor schmuck who has been making your business work for you.

Thanks to Johnnie Moore for the pointer.