The world laughs at Americans because they seem so unaware of anything outside their own borders. Well, a client reports on an American colleague returning to the US head office after a business trip to Sydney. “You know Australia?” he told his office-mates. “It’s almost like another country!” Yeah. Almost. God bless America.
The Earth will be just fine, thanks
Jamais Cascio’s excellent reminder from yesterday’s Earth Day: “The grand myth of environmentalism is that it’s all about saving the Earth. It’s not. The Earth will be just fine. Environmentalism is all about saving ourselves.” A nice little essay. Hat-tip to Memex 1.1.
Laurel Papworth on 9am
Social networks guru Laurel Papworth was on Channel Ten’s 9am with David and Kim this week. Have a look, ‘cos it’s interesting to see how out of touch mainstream media professionals are in all of this. I write about that in my comment to Laurel’s post.
I have not disappeared
No, there is no technical error. I really haven’t posted anything since Monday. Been otherwise occupied. I intend to fix that this afternoon with a mashup of my recent Crikey pieces about eBay Australia forcing its sellers to use PayPal — which they own. Meanwhile if you’re desperate for your daily dose of Stilgherrian, you could always follow my Twitter feed.
Government releases broadband tender documents
The government has released the tender documents for the national 12Mb/second broadband network. As Richard Chirgwin notes, “I don’t think the minister will get 98% of the population, since that last 8% covers a very big geography. And I think that October for announcing the winner is a very slow process. And that a 5 year rollout is a real snail’s pace. But things have started…”
eBay requiring sellers to use PayPal
Anti-competitive behaviour news story of the day: With a few minor exceptions, eBay will require all payments to be made via PayPal — which they own. I’ve just written a piece for Crikey, which will appear around 2pm Sydney time which is now online.