Category: Politics

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Page 161

I noticed this blogging meme over at Quatrefoil’s place and thought I’d give it a try. The results are surprising.

  1. Grab the nearest book.
  2. Open it to page 161.
  3. Find the fifth sentence.
  4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
  5. Don’t search around and look for the coolest book you can find. Use what’s actually next to you.

And the sentence is:

“Sensitive site exploitation will continue.”

That sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense by itself, but the next one adds all the context you need:

So far there had been no WMD stockpiles found.

The book is State of Denial: Bush At War, Part III by investigative journalist Bob Woodward. It’s been months since I read it but for some reason it’s still on my desk.

This afternoon the BBC reports that unnamed “US officials” have evidence that North Korea was helping Syria build a nuclear reactor. Here we go again. I think I might listen to some classic Detroit techno instead.

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Almost like another country

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.

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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…”

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My submissions for Australia 2020

For various reasons I didn’t have much time to write submissions yesterday. Yet I’ve said so much about still believing the Australia 2020 Summit to be important — despite plentiful shortcomings — that I felt obliged to write something. In 500 words or less. So I wrote from the heart…

What emerged were two pieces:

  1. For the governance topic: Managing continual, rapid change with a clear framework of values [PDF].
  2. For the topic on “the economy”, which is where discussions of broadband policy ended up: Broadband: It’s about symmetry, not speed [PDF].

I’m well aware that they don’t really provide a properly-researched, well-argued case. Nevertheless I hope that in some way they’ll help influence debate. Comments appreciated — perhaps over where the submissions themselves are blogged.

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Australia 2020 sumissions close 5pm today

While there’s probably a thousand things I should be doing for my little business, at least part of today will focus on the Australia 2020 Summit because submissions close at 5pm today, AEST.

I find the process odd. While I well understand the need to prevent the summit delegates being overwhelmed, there’s a limit of 500 words on each submission — but also a ban on photographs and other images. Sometimes a diagram could explain things much more effectively, but no this time.

My main challenge, though, is going to be coming up with one clear message for my 500 words. There’s so many things which could be said…