tonygoodson

Sex Records of Rudd's people

Sensational!  The 300+ ministerial and electorate staffers in the Rudd government have to reveal their sexual history/preferences, financial history, and drug habits.

MINISTERIAL staff in the Rudd government are being forced to list their history of sexual partners, before gaining security clearance.

Now you can debate wether or not they should, but how safe are those records to prying eyes.  100% safe?  Want a bet!!

300+ staff now are at risk of having their private lives revealed either to the nosey and voyeuristic, or vengeful.  You can prosecute the people who do this, but that won't stop the information getting out eventually.

You could argue that if you've got nothing to hide then it doesn't matter, but the media can make something out of what you would consider is nothing.

Good Luck to the 300+ form fillers!!  Big Brother is now watching you.......and so are the rest of us!!

Petrol problems about peak oil, not snake oil

Petrol problems about peak oil, not snake oil - Opinion - theage.com.au

Ah Ha!  Ken Davidson, who spoke on a panel at the showing of A Crude Awakening last week, has a piece in The Age today, summarising many of the things he said last week, and pointing out the folly of building a large infrastructure toll road under public-private partnership.

Actually, I love new big roads, speaking as a driver!  But I can see the problems in the long run, if this isn't part of a long term strategy, to recognise we're running out of oil, and in the medium term petrol will be very very expensive. 

At least we're all starting to talk about it.

Crude Awakening - The Oil is running out

I went to see Crude Awakening tonight, a film about our dependency on oil, and how quickly oil is running out, which will be in the next few decades.  Honestly.  It's not a scare thing or some green thing, and it's not about conserving oil, because that will prolong the pain for a just a bit longer.

There was a panel discussion afterwards with;

Elliot Fishman, Phil Hart, and Ken Davidson of The Age

The implications for me, fall into a number or micro and macro areas.

1. Wars will increase to protect the remaining oil

2. Economic decline as we use up the remaining oil but bury our heads in the sand

3. Local change.  Cars will be too expensive to drive, and plastics become too expensive to use.

4. Food will need to be transported locally

5. No more air travel!!

What can we do locally? 

Support public transport, especially more trains and more train infrastructure.  Campaign for a faster broadband infrastructure so less people have to travel to work.  Make more people aware of Peak Oil

I really am having a deep think about what car or cars to own, what investments to have, and what things are going to decline, and where the growth areas are.  Where to live relative to public transport and local schools.

The country with the greatest problem is America, which is totally oil and car dependent.  America will economically crash,unless they start to do something radical over the next 5 years. Ken pointed out that European cities have a public transport infrastructure built before the age of the car.  I wonder how China and India will be able to grow if they can't supply themselves with energy.

In the short term, the price of petrol will go up. What will this mean, over the next few years?  At what point does the cost of running a car cease to be viable?  When does the very high price of petrol begin to impact on the infrastructure and transport, as well as the local and world economy?

What's most interesting here in Australia, is what role coal is going to play in all of this.  The film didn't mention coal!!  it seems to me, that in the short-term, a vast increase in coal usage together with Five Ways to Save the World, is going to be the way forward!!

London 2012 and Good Design

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  And then check these comments out on Digg.  Can so many people hate the new London 2012 Olympics logo, and be wrong.  Occasionally a radical new design comes along which questions and changes our perception, but I don't think it's the London 2012 Olympics logo.  And the trouble with design by committee is that they all start to justify what they've done, and lose sight of it being horrible.  It's sharp, ugly, badly coloured in, and confusing.

And talking of colouring in, a few months back there was discussion of developing an icon for Melbourne.  The best comment I read was the suggestion that an icon should be something that can quickly be drawn by an eight year old.  Think Eiffel Tower, think Sydney Opera House, think Empire State Building.  In fact, think Apple iPod.  So my first reaction was to ask my 5 year old to design something for the London 2012 Olympics.  Funny that the BBC website featured the picture above on the front website.

And then with more thinking (but not much), what do you associate with London, and design round that.  And blow me down if other people haven't done the same thing.  Why does new design have to be radical, why can't it be beautiful and err iconic!  The London Olympics are in London because of London, otherwise they'd be in Manchester!!

Finally, in discussion with Johnnie Moore, we might come up with some "Fruit Salad" design using the Frutiger Linotype font to enhance the Fruit Salad look of the new London logo. And I spotted the Donut Logo as well.   And of course there's radical and there's RADICAL!

No More Oil

Coming Soon, a Crude ending.  The oil is running out.  Few seem to get it yet.  I'll say it again, The Oil is Running Out.  In 50 years time we will have no oil!!

You don't believe me?  Check out Peak Oil.  Check out this blog Phil Hart on things such as Peak Oil.  Check out this film, A Crude Awakening - The Oil Crash.

What will this mean?  Well, I think the problems will start well before the 50 years are up.  Petrol prices only have one way to go, and that's up up up.  What effect will this have on world economies?  Worse still, 6 of the top 10 Fortune 500 companies are Oil or Car Manufacturers.  What will they do to cling to power?

I reckon the real crap will occur over the next 20 years, until we realise that there really is going to be no more oil and change our world economy and the way we live, over to something else.  This isn't about conservation of oil, there isn't enough,  Even if we conserve, maybe we put the event off by a decade, if we'd been more frugal over the last century, then maybe we'd have an extra few decades of oil.  It's been nice whilst it lasted.

Now let's look long into the future and work backwards.  Here in Australia we have plenty of coal, uranium, and sun, but no water or oil!!  So you'd think it would make sense to start working out ways to convert the energy of coal, uranium, and sun into water and transport!!  And I don't mean nuclear powered cars!!  I mean how are we going to convert the energy of coal, uranium and sun, into how we power the batteries of our cars or some other energy medium, as well as desalinating our water or some other miracle.

And there are other fuel sources such as Ethanol, Hydrogen, and other Synthetic fuels.

I'm not too worried about what we end up with as our fuel source, just the turmoil we're going to go through before the dumb Western countries let go of the oil.  So a few things to consider;

1. Go Johnnie Go on the nuclear feasibility studies.  And make 'em quick!

2. What is the feasibility of converting coal or nuclear power into desalination plants?

3. When do we use the most energy?  When we switch on the air conditioning coz it's so hot.  So why not work on solar powered air conditioners!  Doh!!

4. Melbourne with it's electric powered tram and train system is looking good, but there will have to be a much better and longer term transport strategy with hugely more investment, and the same with the other cities in the world.

5. What will the demographics of countries look like with no oil powered cars, and especially no oil powered trucks to transport everything.  Do we start to look like Cuba, with everything apparently based on local communities?

6. How do we move away from a reliance on car manufacturing in the western economies and move to something else, or find an alternative way of powering cars pretty damn quick.  Australia would have to solve its water problem if it went for an ethanol solution, or swap uranium and coal for sugar!!

7. And finally, I think we have the current technology to be looking good in 50 years, with replacement energy for our transport needs, with one exception.....how do you power a jet airliner or a fighter plane without hydrocarbon fuel?  Will synthetic fuel, hydrogen, or something else be able to produce the same efficiency and safety of a current jet engine?

Guardian Unlimited - Change is Bad!

I don't know about you, but I'm finding The Guardian website redesign, really difficult to read.

Change sometimes takes time to get used to, and is usually for the better, but, a few weeks on, I'm finding the front page of GuardianUnlimited unreadable and difficult to scan quickly.

I think I know what the problem is, by looking at the other news websites I read and I'm used to. I like GuardianUnlimited as it was, very good.  The BBC and The Age are also very readable.  The Herald Sun and The Australian aren't as good, but maybe that's down to the content!

So Guardian, I think it's that you've got too much space between lines of text and paragraphs.  The variation in font size and colour should be sufficient to help fast scanning headlines and paragraphs, without the requirement for extra line spacing.  I'd like to see the text and paragraphs closed up more, which for me, is easier to scan quickly.

And now The Guardian has been crashing my Firefox browser for at least the last 2 days.  Maybe I need to reboot my laptop, which I've taken to hibernating for the last few weeks because it's faster to close down!

No Smiling Please, We're Australian!

You're not allowed to smile!  It's official...Australian Passport Renewal Application

"The photos must be taken with a neutral expression (not laughing or frowning) with your mouth closed" 

Same in the UK, but not the USA.  Is this a Commonwealth thing then, that you can't smile in your passport photo?  How long has this been going on for?  I'll bet you're allowed to smile in the Axis of Evil (or the Axis of Good!), just not in the Commonwealth!!  So in which countries can you smile, and where is smiling banned?

Ah, it looks like we stopped smiling in 2004, to combat terrorism!!

Fortune 500 Reality Check

Once in a while I get back in touch with reality by having a look at the Fortune 500 list.

What you find is what you think is big, is usually measured by what is loud. Microsoft, Apple, Google, and all the other tech companies.  Even the media fall for this one, because they report on future potential business growth which is more newsworthy than stark reality.

Go play with the Forbes Global 2000 list, and tell me if you can see a pattern.  Sort by Revenue.  Sort by Market Value.  And then sort by Profit!!  The Profit one will have you fall off your seat!  Those are the bastards that are ripping us off!!  The ones making all the profit!

Yep, the world is dominated by oil.  Cars feed off oil.  And banks finance all this stuff. 

I'd guess that anything that's a threat to the oil/cars/banking combination will be squashed, even if we as consumers or democracies want it a different way.  There's too much at stake to let go of all that money.

Just one problem....the oil is running out!!  See Peak Oil.

Gambling like a Rat!

A great article on the growth of gambling in the UK, The best chance you'll get?

When one of Skinner's rats pressed a lever, it was given a food pellet. By experiment Skinner then established that if a pellet was delivered only on the 10th press of the lever, the rat would quickly learn to press the lever 10 times. If, however, a random element was introduced to the lever-pressing, whereby a pellet was still introduced on average one in 10 times, but sometimes delivered twice or three times in a row and sometimes not for 20 or more presses, the rat apparently became obsessed with the lever-operation itself.

I'd love to be in that UK Labour Cabinet when they discussed the 2005 Gambling Act, to see who if anyone had any moral fibre to stand up against it.  Yeh Yeh, freedom of choice for consumers and individuals, and if people are stupid enough to become addicted than it's their own fault.

A Dose of Tony Benn

I've been inspired by some left-wing rhetoric.  There's nothing like that old war-horse Tony Benn to get you going. You either love him or hate him.  I love him.  I've seen him talk many years ago.  He makes such sense if you listen.  Who wouldn't we want a welfare state, good health care, good free education, fair taxation.  Sounds like Cuba!!
There are no mainstream centre-left parties in the UK, Australia, or the USA.  They're all fighting for the centre-right ground.  I'm sick of the current political horizon, give us some choice.  It's so bad here in Australia, you'd prefer even Johnnie Howard to what Labour has to offer, or is frightened to offer.  Let's see what Kevin Rudd the new Labour leader has to offer.  Probably not much.

Why can't we have  centre-left policies.  Does that really have to bankrupt a country?  I don't get why spending the money on infrastructure instead of bombs is a dud economic policy.  Do bombs really have a better economic return?  I'd much rather see infrastructure, water, air, transport, telecomms, nationalised and run by the government.  By all means have private enterprise run on the infrastructure and sell services using the infrastructure, but some things are too big and risky for commercial enterprises to take on, and we the population suffer, and in some cases aren't able to compete with countries who centrally invest in say, the latest telecomm infrastructure.  It's not just a shareholder payback thing.

Anyway, have a listen to Tony Benn, and either be inspired or angered.

And if Tony Benn doesn't do it for you, then try a dose of Father Bob or Jason Calacanis.