by cameron | Jul 29, 2007 | environment, Podcast, Uncategorized
What does driving a Prius *say* about you? As a person?
What a load of crap.
You aren’t defined as a person by what clothes you wear or by the car you drive. You are defined by what you *do*. Are you contributing something every day towards the betterment of the human race? Or are you merely buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like?
The average income per household (in real dollars) in Australia is up 300% since 1950. And yet two-thirds of the population believe they don’t have enough money to buy everything they *need* to be happy. The advertising industry spends billions of dollars a year trying to convince you that you are unhappy, incomplete, that you aren’t successful until you have one more piece of *stuff*. The Government, the media, big business and the advertising industry all want you to buy more stuff and they spend BILLIONS trying to convince you that you *need* it. Not just want it – NEED it. Advertising is all about creating new wants and then turning those wants into NEEDS. You can fill that hole inside of you, the hole that tell you that you aren’t quite right, if you just buy a new pair of shoes, flat screen tv, house, shares, iphone. Meanwhile, the factories that make the stuff, vomit out pollution into the atmosphere, use energy which is dug out of the ground, that requires us to invade other countries, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
Where does it end?
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Sitting at a cafe this morning, scanning the paper, saw lots of stories about celebrities out of control – Lohan, Richie, Spears, Hilton. All women. Girls, really. The media built them up into massive celebrities, role models for young girls, sexual fantasies for men and boys, and is now viciously tearing them down. It can’t be a coincidence. There must be an agenda. I’m trying to figure out what it is. Why are we seeing the destruction of the young female sex icon? What are they trying to tell us? That young women can’t be trusted? That our women are out of control? That behind every attractive young woman lies an alcoholic, drug-dependent kleptomaniac? That we cannot trust our fantasies? In this era of mass media controlled celebrity, we no longer have leaders. Who are our heroes? Who are the people we look up to?
Sporting stars. The media builds them into celebrities and then reveals that they are all secretly druggies, lying sex maniacs, violent misoginists.
Actors. But then we find out they are all druggies, racists, wife-beaters.
Reality TV stars. But then we find out they are all vacuous and slutty.
Business people. But then we find out they lied about stock options and profits, raped the environment, took the money and run.
What’s the common theme?
The mass media builds up non-entities into celebrities, heroes, and then tears them down in front of our eyes. They spend a couple of years telling you to admire someone, and then show you how shallow, cheap, flawed your hero is.
The message?
There is no-one to look up to. Your heroes are all shameful. Your politicians are liars, cheaters, bullshit artists, greasing their own pockets. Your sporting heroes used drugs to enhance their performance and have out of control egos.
So who do they want you to trust?
Them. The media. Trust them. They will look after you. Tell you who to trust and who not to trust. Tell you which politician to vote for. Which country to invade. Which products to buy. Which foreign leaders to fear. Which dark-skinned person to put in jail because they don’t look like you and don’t believe what you believe.
It’s an economy of lies and the biggest lies, the biggest fraud, is committed by the very people telling you what to believe and what not to believe.
The mass media.
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Speaking of things I *need* – check out this AT-ST Second Life avatar!
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I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
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Apparently people DON’T need to be in Facebook to view or RSVP to an event in Facebook. That’s good news. One less reason for the spate of recent Facebook phobia I was subject to.
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Update on that Paypal fraud issue I had a week ago. Remember I ordered some products off a website, never received them, couldn’t get the site to respond to my emails, they didn’t have a listed telephone number? Well I took Fi’s advice (thanks Fi!) and made a complaint via Paypal. The process took a couple of minutes and, a couple of days later, the company refunded my money, claiming they were out of stock with the product. A good outcomes from Paypal! Obviously the company (DirectDiscount.us) takes Paypal’s emails more seriously than they do mine. A lesson for anyone out there who gets ripped off in a Paypal transaction – make a complaint.
by cameron | Jul 28, 2007 | Podcast
A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Tony Smith, CEO of new online accommodation booking startup, Roamfree. I was asked to keep the interview on hold until the site launched, which was yesterday. Tony is a former Sydney Swans ruckman who started marketing Schoolies holidays when he was in his early 20a, then created management rights business BreakFree, which listed on the stock exchange and later was sold to MFS. We talk about the new business, his business history, and entrepreneurship.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
I’ve created a couple of groups inside Second Life. You can now add yourself to the following groups:
Friends Of G’Day World
MODM
The Podcast Network
If I knew how to link directly to those groups from here, I would. But I don’t. So for now you just need to search for them in-world. Or you can add “Cameron Switchblade” to your friends and check out the groups I belong to.
If you’re a member of Facebook, you can ADD ME AS A FRIEND and then ADD YOURSELF TO THE G’DAY WORLD GROUP.
Add me to your Twitter account.
Do me a solid and digg the show.
Get the TPN version of Particls.
Don’t forget to make use of my new comments line – +613 9016 9699.
You can now buy transcripts of this podcast from Pods In Print.
If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you don’t miss future episodes by subscribing to our feed and leave us a voice comment!
The G’Day World Theme Song is “Save Me†by The Napoleon Blown Aparts.
by cameron | Jul 28, 2007 | CIA, Podcast, Uncategorized
Just went to pay the speeding fine I got leaving Bundaberg and discovered there are no online payment options?! Can’t even pay it over the phone?!? Have to send a cheque. By post. Wow. Queensland. Amazing.
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I’m fascinated this morning watching the shit-fight between Arrington and Furrier/Scoble over Podtech. Having met all three of those guys over the last couple of years, I would have figured them to be pretty tight. It does sound, though, like Podtech have been burning through their $7 million in funding. The business model for podcasting is still in the early days and I hope they make it through. People tend to forget that new business models tend to take 5 – 10 years to stabilize. The first banner ads were run in 1993, but it took nearly a decade before online advertising started to overtake radio advertising in most markets. I think the time frames will be compressed with podcasting, but it is still going to take a few more years before it’s well understood. Most ad agencies and media buyers still aren’t even considering podcasting in their spread. That’s starting to change, but we’ve got a long road ahead of us yet. The TPN model is to keep our overheads low, grow the audience and the content as much as we can, and grow the business through revenue. It’s a slower path but, hopefully, more sustainable in the long run and you don’t get crunched by investors when the journey takes longer than they would like (which seems to be what is happening to Podtech).
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TPN’s Digital Photography Show has been nominated in TWO categories at the Podcast Awards! Please click on the link below to vote for them in both the Cultural/Arts category and also nominated in the People’s Choice category! Congrats to Scott and Michael, this is just another piece of kudos for the great work they do every week on their show!
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According to this post about the CIA:
There are currently at least two criminal trials underway in Italy and Germany against several dozen CIA officials for felonies committed in those countries, including kidnapping people with a legal right to be in Germany and Italy, illegally transporting them to countries such as Egypt and Jordan for torture, and causing them to “disappear” into secret foreign or CIA-run prisons outside the U.S. without any form of due process of law.
Oh, but you think the CIA is being watched by the Oversight board set up 30 years ago to stop the bullshit they were involved in from the 50s through to the 70s? Think again.
However, on July 15, 2007, John Solomon of the Washington Post reported that, for the first five-and-a-half years of the Bush administration, the Intelligence Oversight Board did nothing — no investigations, no reports, no questioning of CIA officials. It evidently found no reason to inquire into the interrogation methods Agency operatives employed at secret prisons or the transfer of captives to countries that use torture, or domestic wiretapping not warranted by a federal court. Who were the members of this non-oversight board of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil monkeys? The board now in place is led by former Bush economic adviser Stephen Friedman. It includes Don Evans, a former commerce secretary and friend of the President, former Admiral David Jeremiah, and lawyer Arthur B. Culvahouse.
And whose daddy ran the CIA in the late 70s? That’s right – Dubya’s. The CIA gets $48 Billion in funding every year, yet nobody knows where it goes or how they spend it and they still haven’t been able to catch bin Laden, they didn’t want America about 9/11 and they were pretty wrong when they said they had conclusive evidence that Saddam had WMD stuffed down his undies. If you want to search for the main reason we have terrorism in our lives these days, start with looking into the activities of the CIA. Get an independent, citizen-helmed inquiry happening. Set it up so it can’t be bought or threatened out of existence. I think we’d all be amazed what it would uncover.
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As my car lease is up in a couple of months, we spent some time this afternoon test driving cars. Or a car, actually. We initially went back to the BMW dealership we bought our last car from. After standing there for 20 minutes without anyone asking if they could help us, we left and went to a Toyota dealership to test drive a Prius. I took a Prius out 3 years ago and couldn’t talk myself into it. This time, I actually quite liked driving it. Okay – it looks ugly and the interior finish just doesn’t compare to a BMW. But I like the efficiency and the tech. And it’s $25k cheaper than an equivalent Beemer. However, on the way home, the wife said to me “I’ll cry if we don’t buy another BMW. I love my BMW.” I asked her how long she’d cry for, thinking, well, I could handle a bit of crying to save the planet. “For the entire time I have to drive a Prius.” Sheesh. And she only drives the car about 30 minutes a week on average! It’s not like she’s even IN it every day. Anyway – score one for BMW’s engineering department. Nobody tell anyone at BMW marketing.
by cameron | Jul 27, 2007 | Melbourne, Uncategorized
Please note that MODM 4 will now be held at:
Date: Thursday, August 2, 2007
Time: 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: Riverland Bar, Vault 1 – 9
Street: Federation Wharf (Under Princes Bridge)
City/Town: Melbourne
Melbourne’s iconic beer garden
Register here if you haven’t already!
by cameron | Jul 27, 2007 | Melbourne, Podcast, Uncategorized
The word on Twitter is that the fine folks at Telstra have banned Facebook on the corporate network. This would be a retarded move for ANY company, let alone a company that is trying to position itself as a company that “gets” online. It reminds me of a question someone asked me at the recent Microsoft ReMix event in Melbourne. We (that is, the panel) have been talking about Twitter, Facebook, etc, and a guy asked “I’m the owner of a business, how do I stop my people from wasting their time on these sites instead of doing their work?” I explained that any half-intelligent employer in the 21st century should be measuring their employees by their OUTPUT, not by what time they punch the clock or what they are doing each minute of the day. Microsoft, to it’s credit, understood this years ago. Most enlightened managers (not that there are many left at Microsoft in Australia now that Frank has left the premises) didn’t care what time you turned up to the office, when you left, or what you did during the day. What they cared about was one thing and one thing only – did you get the outcome accomplished? If you did – great. Here’s your bonus. If you didn’t – then you’re in trouble. Isn’t that the way every employer should be? If you ban Facebook, do you also ban books? Magazines? Telephones? Talking to the person beside you about everything unrelated to work? That isn’t even taking into account what a useful took Facebook can be for getting your job done (depending on what your job is of course).
Anyway, this is just another example of how Telstra don’t really get what’s happening online.
UPDATE: According to Rich in the comments of this post, Telstra turned Facebook back on this afternoon? Anyone know the story?
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Started reading “Affluenza” by Australian authors Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss today. I’ve been meaning to get to this book for years. The book poses the question: “if the economy has been doing so well, why are we not becoming happier?”
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From the “I told ya so but you wouldn’t frakking listen” file:
“TV viewing audiences have fallen by almost 6 per cent in the past five years, with a dramatic 17 per cent drop for 16-39-year-olds, according to TV ratings group OzTAM.” (source: The Age)
And, according to Fortune:
“Newspapers are dying.”
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I took my DOPOD 838PRO into the THREE store for repairs 7 weeks ago. At the time, they told me it would take a month. I rang four weeks later, they said it was going to take another three weeks. I rang today. They said it was initially with one repair center, Teleplan, for a month then it was shipped to another repair center, Phonetec, a week ago. The Phonetec people haven’t looked at it yet and can’t give them a date when it will be fixed.
This is frakking unbelievable. I’m now on the phone to Three customer support, letting them know I want my entire contract canceled.
Okay, well that was disappointing. I spoke with four people at Three customer support. When they couldn’t provide me with any idea as to when my phone would be fixed, I gave them a choice: give me a new phone or cancel my account. The guy in the Three cancellations department I spoke to offered me a new phone, but only the Dopod 595, an inferior model to my 838Pro. So I asked him to cancel my services. Sure, he said, but it’ll cost you $900! Bullshit, I said. That’s the hardware fee and I don’t HAVE the hardware. YOU’VE got the hardware. He said it also includes a $300 “cancellation” fee. But I don’t have the goddamn phone?!! He didn’t give a shit. So I told him I’ll find another way to make my complaint heard and get a resolution.
Anyone know anyone senior at Three?
Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
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Dave Wallace (from TPN’s Extraordinary Everyday People show) has made a TPN T-shirt in Second Life! Very cool, I hope he has it in my size!
He did!
Second Life is so trippy. I can’t believe I just said to Dave “I bought a new body last night but I can’t figure out how to put it on.” Sounds like something straight out of Gibson.
