29 August 06 - 11:42The gentle art of persuasion

Don Chipp has died, aged 81. Andrew Bartlett has written about him, and there are articles in The Australian and The Age.
I only met Don Chipp a couple of times, but I was always impressed, not just by his political liberalism, and commitment to individual freedom and responsibility, social justice and the environment, which is a given for me, and why I originally joined the Australian Democrats, but also by his presence and his ability to turn a room just by speaking. Politics nowadays is almost always bland and tightly spun, and people are often reluctant to say what they mean, particularly as they run the risk of being torn down by a media contingent looking for any hook on which to hang a story. Don Chipp always spoke his mind, and wasn't afraid to publicly change it if his beliefs on an issue had changed. He had an integrity that is now actively discouraged in a political scene dominated by spin, manipulation, and emotionalism instead of analysis.
I think it's worth remembering Don's life in total, rather than just the later part of it when he helped found and then subsequently lead the Australian Democrats, significant as that was. He was married twice, and had six children. He was also, at various times, a Liberal Party member of parliament, a federal government minister, CEO of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games civic committee and chairman for Victoria's first doorknock cancer appeal. He was an accomplished sportsman, and played VFA for Heidelberg and AFL for Fitzroy. While Customs and Excise Minister, he significantly liberalised Australia's censorship and classifcations regulations. Any one of these achievements would be noteworthy, but when you put all of them together it shows what a remarkable man he was.
He leaves a huge legacy, and will be sorely missed.

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23 August 06 - 11:24Australian wins Fields Medal

Professor Terence Tao, who was born in Adelaide, and is a graduate from Flinders University, has been awarded the Fields Medal for his research into partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and number theory. (more)

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22 August 06 - 23:48Worst Australian band names

Jack Marx has blogged about the worst Australian band names. He included Lubricated Goat in the list. I had totally forgotten about them - my brother David and I saw In the Raw late one night (probably on Rage) when we were kids, and the memories unfortunately came flooding back when I saw the name. I don't agree with him about Pseudo Echo or Mental as Anything, and I'm not convinced about Machine Gun Fellatio (it was the combination of their distinctive name, and also the fact that some student unions in Melbourne cancelled their shows for alleged sexism that interested me, and I'm sure others, enough to check them out, and I don't imagine that they started out wanting to get on FOX or MMM's Top 40), but I think the rest of his list is pretty reasonable.
I'm sure many people could come up with some more suggestions for bad names - but one that I noticed that wasn't mentioned was Big Pig. I love their album BONK, and own a copy, but it's still a bloody stupid name.

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19 August 06 - 23:18Vegetable pot

I have been sick all week, and as I currently have a craving for roast vegetables, I figure I'll do the right thing for once, put away the Krispy Kremes I bought for the household on Friday, and attempt to use the dodgy oven in the new house. So here's a recipe of sorts - it's just a slice and dice, and chuck in the oven approach to cooking. (more)

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19 August 06 - 19:50they are your fears and your terrors

They are your fears and your terrors and they live in a cave at the pit of your psyche and all are named Dave
Damien has inspired me to watch The Maxx again. I'd like to read the original comics, so if anyone has them or can point me to a library where I can borrow them, I'd be most grateful. (more)

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15 August 06 - 23:33Leopard screenshots

Macbidouille has posted screenshots from the preview of Leopard (the next version of MacOS X due out early in 2007).
It looks like a solid, if not spectacular improvement over the current OS, and I particularly like the look of their virtual desktops implementation. Maybe I'll wait on getting a Macbook until Leopard has been released so I can save on the cost of buying the OS later on. I seriously doubt I'll be able to hold out that long, though.

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15 August 06 - 22:56More stupid boycotts, Dana International and Ruslana

After reading about yet another silly boycott at Ari's weblog, I was inspired to buy one of Dana International's albums Maganona off iTunes. I had previously purchased her Eurovision winning single Diva back in 1998, and I thought she was fabulous at Eurovision 1999 (certainly her performance was better than the eventual winner, who I can't even remember). iTunes being what it is, it was then scarily easy to indulge myself by buying another Eurovison winner's single. I have just finished listening to Ruslana's Wild Dances, which won Eurovision 2004. Ruslana was elected to the Ukranian parliament earlier this year. It makes me wonder about what some of the recent Eurovision winners have been up to.

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15 August 06 - 00:14Let's boycott everything!!

While reading some posts at Melbourne Indymedia (BTW I don't normally read Indymedia) pointed out to me by Daniel about the controversy over the Hiroshima Day rally, I came across this call to boycott Connex because they are involved in building light rail links in Jerusalem and the Westbank, and this photo at the Hiroshima Day Rally in Melbourne. Their stance strikes me as completely ridiculous for a whole heap of reasons - especially as they want hundreds of thousands of people to boycott the only train provider in Melbourne, and somehow get to work (by magic probably, because there's no way that many cars can fit on already clogged peak-hour roads) - but particularly because they're calling for a boycott of Connex due to their doing business in Israel while using the internet, which means they will (even if their own computers don't use Intel CPUs) be relying on servers with Intel chips at some point, and many Intel CPUs are designed in Israel generating hundreds of millions of dollars for the Israeli economy each year. Maybe they should be asking themselves if it's got Intel Inside before pontificating at people via the internet.
As an aside - if I had $2100 spare right now, I'd be buying a white Macbook with Superdrive and the wonderful Intel Core Duo mobile CPU - code named Yonah, designed in Haifa.

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13 August 06 - 22:00Reefer Madness, the musical

Speaking of addictions, has anyone seen or heard anything about the Reefer Madness Musical?

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13 August 06 - 21:26Koko Black

I finally sucumbed to temptation, and spent $20 today on 260gm of fine, divine chocolate from Koko Black in Chadstone. I blame Iestyn for this. It all started when he approached me at a party recently with a brown, rumpled paper bag. The bag contained 99% noir chocolate, and as they say, the first taste is always free.

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13 August 06 - 13:47e-zine links

I was home all day yesterday with a really bad head cold, so I started roaming around the web, and stumbled across a few e-zines:
(more)

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12 August 06 - 18:54So dip me in chocolate...

Watching The Jerry Springer Show - usually with Daniel after midnight when we still had foxtel - has long been a guilty pleasure of mine. The show is trashy, exploitative, and is probably mostly faked, but it always manages to suck me in to watching it. So I was really happy to finally find the time to watch a remarkable piece of theatre: Jerry Springer - The Opera. Needless to say, if you're offended by obscenities, sexual references or religious references, then don't watch it). (more)

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04 August 06 - 16:31So what's going on, anyway?

We settle on the sale of our house in a week. We still have a small amount of stuff to move, as well as cleaning and gardening. We should have finished it all by Sunday afternoon. I have been sick with this gastro virus that has been doing the rounds - it hasn't been fun, and my concentration isn't the best at the moment.
I had lunch with mododrum today, which was great. She was wearing her purple coat and boots from vic gothic - she looked amazing.
We're going to take Olav's grandma and his 8 year old cousin, Kai, to Puffing Billy tomorrow. We'll probably look at some of the shops in the Dandenongs while we're in the area. They are visiting from Germany for about 4 weeks. I also want to get some time to sort through more of the unopened boxes from moving - it's driving me a little nuts at the moment. I made a huge effort to get rid of a lot of junk, but I'm feeling more cramped for space than before the move (we have moved into a signifcantly smaller house). It is made worse by having boxes everywhere - I need to get a new shelf for dvds, but it will need to wait for a few weeks until I am less broke. Cash flow becomes a big issue when selling house and moving - there are extra costs for having 2 places overlap, plus reconnecting utilities and having furniture kept in storage. In two months time it will all be fine, and our living costs will be much cheaper, especially given that I won't be using Citylink or driving 70-80kms a day in a 16 year old bomb. I'm much happier with the new location, though - it's much closer to public transport and good shops.

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04 August 06 - 01:07Broadband at last

It has been an ordeal, but we finally have broadband connected at the new house. I don't know how I used to live with just dial-up, although things have changed, and sites are now much larger and more image-intensive.

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