Filed under: Placeless, Spaceless | Tags: ANU, Crawford School, Graduate Study, PhD
Holy Moly Moses. My knees are getting weak, I’m feeling clammy and there is a bead of sweat dripping down my face. I’m excited. Too excited. I think I might blow.
What has prompted this excitement? Would you believe it: a University Website!
I wanna study at that uni … I reckon I could do doctorate study there no problem! That’d be awesome. How hard can a doctorate be, really?!
Filed under: Placeless, Spaceless | Tags: blogging, Creative Genius, Elizabeth Gilbert Lecture, Making Money Online
An increasing amount of my time is spent blogging or researching topics to blog about.
Why?
What possesses me to spend valuable hours pouring out political analysis, personal confessions and private recommendations to an average audience of three unique users a day?
Is it to get rich? I’m am starting to realise that the answer can only be: NO.
As Daniel Lyons of Newsweek pointed out recently in a piece entitled ‘Growing Rich by Blogging is a High-Tech Fairy-Tale,’ the notion that blogs are money-making enterprises is illusory and pie-in-the-sky. Lyons points out that even in his record-breaking month where a whopping 1.5 million people visited his blog, the total earnings from Google’s AdSense revenue was a measly $1039.81.
So why do it?
Is it for the self-expression? Maybe.
As I read back over my blogs for 2007 I do notice how the subjects upon which I blogged about became my reality. My self-confessions about disillusionment in my profession, worries about alcoholism, and ‘fantasy new years resolutions’ have all received much-needed attention and fulfillment through their expression.
But what of my recent trend towards writing political analysis?
If I am purportedly not seeking money or self-expression for these nuggets of enlightenment that I spew out into the blogosphere, then what for?
I have to admit I don’t know, yet.
But a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of best-seller “Eat, Pray, Love” on creativity and the need to ‘nuture’ genius within ourselves might go some way to explaining it. The video comes courtesy of TED, Ideas Worth Spreading.
Filed under: Politics | Tags: Australian Forestation, Coen Brothers Clean Coal TV Spot, Reality Coalition, Turnbull Climate Policy
It seems that ole Turny-Turnstile just can’t catch a break.
Like much of the coal and oil industry, Turnbull’s attempt to greenwash himself into someone more like the Honorable Senator Brown appears to be failing.
While initially sounding promising, Turnbull’s proposal to plant 9 million hectares of forest throughout Australia and thus conserve and trap up to 146 million tonnes of CO2 has now been shown to be a furphy.
In full-colour glory the Agriculture Minister Tony Burke demonstrated how, to achieve Turnbull’s stated aims of planting 9 million trees, Australia would essentially have to give up on farming.
Annabel Crabb delivers a particularly cutting analysis of this little interchange.
Turnbull’s forests, the minister explained, would have to be planted all over Queensland’s canefields, and all the way down the east coast. Agricultural land around Tamworth and Glen Innes would not be immune, nor Queensland’s humble Nambour, birthplace of our own Prime Minister.
Score One, Tony Burke.
If that weren’t bad enough, it appears that the sheen on the concept of ‘Clean Coal’ is appearing to be wearing a little thin. Perhaps it need another coat of greenwash?
The latest critics of said non-dirty coal are Academy Award-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen, who have created a 30 second TV spot for the Reality Coalition debunking the myth of clean coal.
Clean coal has many critics … most of them very learned people like scientists and energy experts who continuously point out that simply because we call it clean don’t make it so. But when academy-award winning directors jump on board the bandwagon, you know the entertainment industry is pulling out all the stops. Sean Penn was clearly not enough.
What does this mean? Soon we might see the evaporation of Turnbull’s other prong in his plan: the construction of two commercial scale (read: at least 500mgw) clean coal plants. That would reduce Turnbull’s plan to nothingness.
Score Two: Coen Brothers
It’s lucky there aren’t too many Turnbull’s trying to greenwash themselves Brown, as it is there is an awful lot of hot air up there already.
Filed under: Economics | Tags: Consumption, Credit Crunch, Economics, Global North, neo-Keynesianism, neoliberalism
It seems that everywhere I look, every article I read, every comment or analysis remotely related to finance, economics, or the current global malaise is directed to one aim: bringing down Neoliberalism.
Blaming neoliberalism for our current problems is convenient. Very convenient. Like communism in the 50s, drugs in the 80s, or terrorism in the naughties; neoliberal economics would seem to be this decade’s convenient source of blame for all our problems.
Declaring a ‘war’ on terror ignores the causes of terrorism.
Declaring a ‘war’ on the supply and distribution of drugs in the Global South ignores the underlying demand for them by those in the Global North.
And declaring a war on Communism ignores the underlying attractions of a system that manages to achieve a Gini Coefficient (a measure of inequality in wealth distribution) on par with more developed OECD countries, despite obvious imabalances in national wealth and GDP between them.
Blaming Neoliberal thought for our current global crisis ignores the fact that those in the Global North possess a seemingly unquenchable desire to consume above and beyond their pay grade, racking up mountains of debt and houses larger than they could possibly need or afford.
But I’m not nearly qualified to debate the problem. There are many more qualified people debating the pros and cons of neoliberlism: who were the architects, where we went wrong, and what should be done now.
Some of these are particularly good arguments. Like this particularly well thought out analysis from Crikey’s Steve Keen upon the current ideological battles being fought out between current Prime Minister Rudd and former Prime Minister Howard.
Now I would never be one to fight in the corner of Neoliberalism. If I were to resist my urge against classification and generalisation I would label myself a ’social democrat’ rather than a ‘neoliberal’. But I can’t help but wonder whether this current phase of neo-Keynesianism or anti-neoliberalism is just that: a phase.
Is neo-Keynesianism this year’s ‘black’? Like cowboy hats, leveraging, the Yo-Yo or those pants that look like adult diapers, is Neoliberalism merely out of fashion for the next couple of decades, only to rear its Hydraic head in another form … perhaps NEO-neoliberalism! Or should that be NEW-neoliberalism … do two neos make a wrong?
Filed under: Activism | Tags: Digital Economy, ISP Filtering Policy, Rudd Government, Senator Conroy
So I recently wrote an email to the Rudd Government about their ludicrous plans to introduce filtering into all Australians’ access to the Internet. I also wrote to the Greens and the Opposition.
You can see the transcript of this email here.
I received pretty standard response from both the Greens and the Liberals, from someone in their offices dealing with this particular policy. They were pretty predictable, but well received nonetheless. And I got a response in a timely fashion.
However from the Government, more specifically from the office of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, I got this response:
Dear Mr Clay
Thank you for your recent email to the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
If you would like a reply to your email please provide your full postal address within 7 days, and every effort will be made to respond to your questions and comments as soon as possible.
Please note that if no address is provided within 7 days a formal reply will not be sent, although your comments will be noted.
Yours sincerely
Parliamentary Liaison Section
RIDICULOUS! Is this the correct response to receive from the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy?
Please send us your postal address quoting a reference number and we will POST you a letter?! That would be laughable if it weren’t so depressing.
This is a clear demonstration of how behind the eight-ball the government and Minister Conroy is. Prime Minister Rudd can harp on about his (now disastrously enacted) NBN and how every ‘working family will have fibre-to-the-node’ (like he knows what that means) but this just demonstrates how these are nothing but fair-weather headline-grabbing promises, and at its heart, the Rudd government has no clear handle on the ‘Digital Economy’.
Filed under: Activism | Tags: cartoon, hope, mr. fish, obama, truthdig, unemployment
Stumbled across this on Truthdig.
Lovingly rendered concept.
Spare Change
Filed under: Activism | Tags: Australia, Censorship, Internet Polciy, ISP Filtering, Malcolm Turnbull, Stephen Conroy
Mr Turnbull,
I am writing about an issue that refuses to go away, despite the ludicrousness and complete stupidity of the policy plan.
Green Light for ISP Filtering Trials
If Australia is to go ahead with its current plan to begin filtering the internet of ‘illegal’ sites (as defined by whom?) then we will be joining the ranks of such human rights abusers and bastions of censorship like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others in the illustrious bunch.
Please do not allow the Opposition to be drawn into this ridiculous quagmire of issues- and morals-based politicking.
Even if we allow that the certain areas of the internet need to be ‘quartered off’ from certain sections of the population, there already exists wonderfully more advanced, tested, and improved technology to do so. Software, both open source and proprietary, exists and has existed for many many years to combat the problem of children straying across information and spectacles they shouldn’t. The software is immensely popular and sells very well through companies like Norton and McAfee. In fact, it often comes bundled with the family computer at purchase.
To claim that it is the government’s responsibility to oversee and ‘protect’ us from illegal content on the internet is both a disregard to personal freedoms and free will, and a meddling in the supposedly free market we claim to uphold. The product and services to ‘rope off’ sections of the internet already exists on an individual or group basis – this software is already habitually employed all across Australia’s schools and universities. It works perfectly well there.
There is no reason for the government to commit to such an expensive, morally-ambiguous, issues-based cheap shot.
A better use of the Government’s money (which I might add is also taxpayer’s money) if this is truly an issue that needs to be dealt with (which I hazard it might not be) would be to subsidise the purchase of an Australian-made individual filtering program (like those provided by McAffee or Norton) for families within a certain income bracket. This would immediately pump some money into the economy, ensure the money stays in the country, while supporting Australia’s role as lead innovators globally.
Please do not allow the Opposition to be drawn into this ridiculous quagmire of issues- and morals-based politicking. This is not good policy, and you know it.
Regards,
Michael Clay
OMG, I just discovered StumbleUpon tonight, and cannot believe I have spent so much time looking at the same tired old stuff on the web before.
I have stumbled upon some amazing things, just amazing things.
But some of the greatest have been in the ‘Writing’ category. These sites (so far) seem to contain little exercises, writing tips, or inspiring examples of writing.
One site, onetwofiver.com is a simple exercise that asks you to write one word, and then two, and then 5, and to just keep writing. Here’s what I came up with …
1. testosterone
2. triangulation towards
5. touching tips of fingers towards
10. the peak of physical exigency has reached its limits at last
20. however much is yet to be done. the past rushes up and over us like too much chow mein, a
50. proverbial acid reflux of history. We are awash in our own incrementally (excrementally?) increasing filth. we are saturated by it. it is evidence in the smallest ticks, the most unconcious actions, the ceaseless fidgetty hands poised over computer mice; grimey, flithy hands that masturbate, eat, click and repeat. Forever.
