Author: Stilgherrian

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Australia 2020 News, 13 March 2008

I wonder if Australia’s Jewish communities will be suitably placated by having their own kosher pre-summit summit on 14 April, since the main Australia 2020 Summit on 19-20 April clashed with Passover?

Meanwhile, the process of selecting the 1000 “best and brightest” (minus the politically-handy pre-selections) started yesterday. There’s “more than 10,000 applications” to deal with — though previously the figure was 7000+ so who knows who to believe.

[Summit vice-chairman] Professor [Glyn] Davis met Mr Rudd on Tuesday to review progress for the huge gathering. A team, including Victorian public servants and some of Professor Davis’ staff, is working on the agenda, while a Queensland bureaucrat is helping with background material for the summiteers.

Mind you:

The committee also has lists of possible summiteers sent in by the public and CVs that are not accompanied by formal applications.

I’d have thought that being unable to follow the published nomination process would automatically exclude you from being Australia’s “best and brightest”.

It’s sounding like we’ll know the list of 1000 early next week.

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Oh well done Aunty Victoria!

The Victorian government is going to ban ATMs from gaming venues.

So, just because some people get suckered into shoving all their money into addictive machines, the rest of us are denied the convenience of withdrawing cash at the pub when we’re running short. Instead we have to go down the street — where we can be mugged more easily.

Here’s a thought. If gaming machines are the problem, why not get rid of the gaming machines?

Oh, that’s right. 8% of Victoria’s revenue comes from gaming machine taxes [PDF file], a total of 13% from gambling of all kinds.

Chairman Rudd has already said he supports Nick Xenophon’s push to remove ATMs from gaming areas. Xenophon doesn’t even become a Senator until 1 July, but already he’s an object of sincere and deep affection.

We’d already started to see the rise of a new wowserism. Imagine what it’s going to like when the balance of power in the Senate is held by Xenophon and Family First’s Senator Steve Fielding! If you thought we’d seen dull conformity before…

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Honesty is the best policy

Scan of newspaper page, text in article

“I supposed at least he was honest,” said Duncan Riley when he passed on this story (pictured).

I’ll reproduce the text here so the search engines find it — which may or may not be a Good Thing. My website ends up in enough weird searches as it is.

Burglary

A 38-year-old Cole Avenue man reported that his home was invaded on Sept. 9. The man said that he was sitting home alone masturbating and watching a pornographic movie when a man came down into the basement, holding a gun, and started to videotape him. The man said that before he left, the intruder fed his dog some mushrooms and the dog died.

The story is supposedly from The Beacon Journal, Sunday 21 September 2003. If it’s a fake, someone’s gone to a lot of trouble.

Now, is this the weirdest crime story you’ve heard recently? Please, links to even weirder ones!

OK, that’s set the tone for the day…

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Twitter updates for 2008-03-12

  • New rant: "Australia 2020: The Disillusionment". http://tinyurl.com/2tfwfq #
  • @juancarzola Welcome new Twitterstalker(tm). May I be suitably informative, entertaining, controversial, boring or erotic, as you need. #
  • @bck Our toilet seat is up: we’re an all-male household. #
  • 2web Crew talking about my favourite man, Jason Calicanis… #
  • @ApostrophePong magickally turns into an Aussie at 1730, errands and pottering until then. #
  • Eric TF Bat has written a glorious response to my mention of Westpac ATMs yesterday. http://etfb.livejournal.com/119093.html #
  • ABC (Aust) launching 3 new internet TV channels, 60 (yes sixty!) local websites. http://tinyurl.com/3doeq7 I will have commentary tomorrow. #
  • @zhasper If is IS Windows-only I’ll have even more vitriol for my commentary. Then again I watch ABC happily on Mac now. F’ing .rm or .wmv t #
  • @artywah @duncanriley I’ll chase those tech issues in the morning, prob writing a Crikey piece on it all. #
  • @ApostrophePong and I heading off to turn him into an Aussie. Brain-scoop in hand, beer in the other… #
  • Note to self: Do not try to joke with Immigration officials about Cornelia Rao. #
  • About 50 ppl being sworn in as citizens. #
  • Just saw that they sell souvenir photos. They’d better not try to stop me doing my own! #
  • All cool, joking with official photographer. #
  • @zhasper They’re still explaining procedure, @ApostrophePong in holding pen. #
  • @ApostrophePong is #38 in queue, all done individually for photos etc. #
  • Where tf is the Mayor? We have a room full of impatient immigrants! #
  • Oh here he is… Afk. #
  • @AstrophePong is now an Aussie, we’ve chatted politics with the mayor, and drunk their wine. Pics later. #
  • @ApostrophePong that is. #
  • @garthk Thank you for the DVD of Max Headroom series 1… Cabaret Voltaire! Japan! FTW! #