I sure hope Peter Garrett got a good price for his soul because his principles sure haven't amounted to much. He seems to have a Short Memory with his politicans, party lines, don't cross that floor!
There is one thing he's achieved. Any time one of my mates decides to joins the ALP and says you have to be in power to achieve change, my answer can be "oh yeah, like Peter Garrett has then?"
The police who raided and smashed the crap out of a building full of peaceful protestors in Genoa in 2001 will get off completely from all their crimes, despite being found guilty. A statute of limitations means their convictions and sentences will expire before going into effect.
This kind of injustice will breed violence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the victims decided to mete out their own justice, given the system has completely failed them. What's more, I imagine if the cops ever tried to raid a building full of protestors again, the protesters might decide to use violence to defend themselves, since the state won't do it for them.
Scary stuff.
I discovered a really great French radio station recently, France Inter Paris (FIP). It's got a quite unique format, playing blocks of themed music grouped roughly into styles. You tend to hear a half hour or so of music within a style, and the range of styles is incredibly eclectic.
Between 07:00 and 23:00 French time, a short news bulletin is run at ten minutes to the hour, and a dulcet-toned French woman will give a short background to the music. Otherwise it's pretty much advert and long talk free.
My only criticism is that outside the live announcer hours, you can't find out what music they're playing on the web site. Even when the music is listed, the stream is quite a bit out of sync with what's listed on the site.
Anyway, give FIP a go. It streams in high quality mp3 online.
Also an interesting read is the Wikipedia article, including details of the long-running pirate transmitter in Brighton, England.
The broad beans came out today. We've had an enormous amount of beans from a very small space. They were lovely! However, they've been taking up a lot of space and providing a haven for snails and cabbage moth caterpillars that are munching the brocolli and sprouts. Tonight we'll eat the last beans in a risotto with some leftover salami from pizzas made earlier in the week. Yummy! I'll definitely be planting a lot of broad beans next winter. They've been an excellent crop.
In their place I've planted a bunch of tomatoes and a few lettuces. I've got a Digger's Russian Tomato mix and another 5-colour mix in there. They should come along nicely! I also planted out some peas and more beans.
Holly and I had a bit of a seed-a-thon this afternoon, planting loads of new seeds. I've had some going a week or two: tomatoes, cucumber, more beans. I bought some of those jiffy pellets to try too, since I've not been having much luck with chillis. They apparently work well in these little pellets that swell when you water them.
As well there's more radishes, more basil, more chives, more lettuces. The summer crops which we'll need to keep going.
So apparently Lindsay Tanner reckons the government is keen to use web 2.0 buzzword compliant tools. The first lesson they need to learn is that we talk to each other, compare notes and compare responses we receive. Second thing about all this web 2.0 crap is that it's social, and the one thing that stands out more than anything else is robotically-created canned replies.
I sent Albo the following response:
Dear Anthony, Thank you for your recent form letter. It's refreshing to see that my comments and queries are completely ignored, and instead of either considering or responding to them, you've sent all people contacting you the exact same message. I'll be sure to return the favour at the next election when someone tries to hand me an ALP how-to-vote. In case you'd like to actually read, and respond to, my email, I'm including it again.
I'm not holding out much hope of a rational response.
The invite to the Xmas party has an asterisk leading to fine print at the bottom...
It's US presidential election time again, and the big story as always in America is long queues at polling places. I don't get it. They have the simplest voting system going, where all you get to do is tick a box for your preferred candidate. Yet it takes ages, despite (or is it because of) the use of the latest voting technology.
Australian elections use a relatively complex system of tabulating votes, yet a clear winner is almost always known within a few hours of voting closing. The most I've had to queue to vote (outside of voting at Australia House in London, which often has queues around the block) in an Australian election is about two minutes.
So what is it that makes the voting process so slow in American elections? Why are there over 30 minute queues as standard?
So without even going into the serious problems with voting machines, it seems they don't actually solve any actual problems, and I suspect cost a lot more to operate than having a bunch of casual vote counting staff on the evening of the vote. In Australian elections I've been involved in (as a party volunteer) the same staff who operate the polling place all day stay back for the vote count in the evening.
The big question is, given this is likely to be the first election of a non-Republican since Bush stole the vote from Gore in 2000 (assuming they don't pull the same trick again), will the Democrats look at reforming the voting systems to prevent these state-based tricks?
I've had an upset stomach the last few days, even had yesterday off work. Not very pleasant, and I missed the Melbourne Cup festivities. To help recover, I've been eating quite bland food, without spices or dairy products. Last night that meant some tomatoey broad beans on toast, which went down fine.
Today, back at work and hunting for a bland lunch, I discovered On Ramen on Hay Street, Haymarket. Ramen entered my repertoire of comfort foods on a cold Winter day in Tokyo. One of my colleagues took us down the road from the Spike offices to a tiny ramen joint. The place had about six bar stools and you sat slurping at the bar while the owner cooked up your simple, but delicious, noodles. There were also gyoza on offer.
Behind the owner, a boiling pot of stock looked like it'd been going since the post-war reconstruction, with the occasional onion or pig thrown in and the water topped up each day. The owner would take some parboiled noodles, dunk them in for another boil, then serve them up covered in the amazing stock and whatever meat you'd selected. Even for this simple meal, the presentation was brilliant.
So does On Ramen, Shop 4, 181 - 187 Hay St, Haymarket match up? I think so! Tasty noodles and soup. My pork belly and miso ramen was pretty good, though the pork was probably a bit sweet for my tastes. The salty, rich broth is exactly what my recovering body needs. If chicken soup is Jewish Penicillin, surely ramen is the Japanese version?
Note to Americans: Ramen does not mean instant noodles.
Quote of the moment from the boss of the boss, holding his shiny new iPhone:
"I don't know how to make a call!"
JavaScript bit me again, with its concatenation operator being the same as its addition operator. So instead of the total amount of an order, I ended up with a string of all the prices in the order. Grrr.
I must remember what Crockford says in Appendix A: Awful Parts:
The + operator can add or concatenate. Which one is does depends on the types of the parameters. If either operand is an empty string, it produces the other operand converted to a string. If both operands are numbers, it produces the sum. Otherwise, it converts both operands to strings and concatenates them. This complicated behaviour is a common source of bugs. If you intend + to add, make sure that both operands are numbers.