Filed under: Political
Thanks to Stuart and Alan for alerting me to this.
The Government is planning to create two blacklists: one for children, similar to the one already operating in DECS schools, and one for everyone. The idea is to blacklist child pornography and terrorism sites, which is a noble idea in theory, but as any kind of computer person could tell you, impossible practically without dramatically reducing internet speed (which, in Australia, is already amongst the worse in the developed world), increase internet costs (amongst the most expensive in the world, too) and blocking at least 3% legitimate websites. Oh, and they want to block bittorrent websites too.
This is wrong on a couple of levels. One, superficially, if you’ve ever tried to use a computer in a public (or private) school, you understand how damned irritating these kind of Net Nanny programs are – this blog, for example, would be blocked automatically, because blogs are banned altogether (not sure why? – especially since many people use WordPress to publish actual websites). This has been a huge hindrance to my teaching, let me tell you.
On a more sincere level, this threatens civil liberties. If anyone needs an education on where things like this can lead, talk to my mate Meg, who’s teaching in Japan at the moment. WordPress? no. You Tube? no. Facebook? no. Myspace? no. All because of the ‘national interest’. Scary stuff. There is a reason why lefties and civil libertarians are always harping on about freedom of speech and other similar old fashioned concepts: there is still danger even in a little bit of limitation, such as this.
For more info:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7968823265
Filed under: Political
An ex of mine sent this in an email. I found it quite disturbing, but an important piece of satire, reflecting on the controlled farce that was Beijing 2008. I love the Olympics, despite the commercialism of it, but I don’t believe Beijing deserved the privilege of hosting the games. The IOC’s assertion that giving Beijing the games would improve conditions and put pressure on China to improve it’s human rights and environmental record has failed in my opinion: bulldozed shanty towns? Seeded clouds? CGI fireworks in a ‘live’ broadcast? Milli Vanilli five year old? No wonder everyone was joking that the Chinese competitors who failed to win gold were taken out the back and shot.
Meanwhile everytime I saw that logo, this is what I was thinking of:
How To Design A Logo:
