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?
******
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.
******
Speaking of things I *need* – check out this AT-ST Second Life avatar!
******
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.
******
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.
******
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 | 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.
******
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).
******
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!
******
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.
******
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 26, 2007 | Iran, Uncategorized
Back in the chair today after the QLD trip and meeting all day yesterday. Looking forward to making some casts. Doing the next Napoleon and a GW today. Paul Montgomery is going to join me on GW. Want to talk about the IMF and WTO. Also my review of the wicked headphones the nice people at Ultimate Ears sent me today.
******
Trying to get Norman Solomon, author of the book / film “War Made Easy” onto GW as a guest. Emailed his PR folks.
******
You know what pisses me off? People who say they are going to do something with you, allow you to invest time and energy into the project, and then pull out with weak-ass excuses, having done squat. Where’s my elephant gun….
******
When am I going to be able to run Second Life on Vista???
******
w00t! I’m back in Second Life. Finally got it working on my new Vista PC. Add me as your friend so I don’t feel so frakkin dorkish. My Second Life nick is “Cameron Switchblade”.
******
I’ve seen this video with Zappa (about censorship in music) before but Hugo linked to it recently so I watched it again. Zappa was a brilliant thinker. Interesting that this was on CNN (in 1986). Watching it now, you’d swear you’d were watching FOX.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ISil7IHzxc]
******
Scanning the recently-launched Global Peace Index, which ranks 121 nations according to their relative peacefulness. Fascinating stuff. Australia ranks at only #25, behind Uruguay and just ahead of Romania. I’m feeling proud. The USA comes in at #96, slightly ahead of Iran. #1 is Norway.
by cameron | Jul 21, 2007 | Iraq, Uncategorized
Bundaberg. Cold. Slow. No 3G. Using my mum’s PC. She’s on some bullshit BigPond DSL plan where she only gets 400Mb a month for $40!! And it’s nearly used up, so I’m moving her to Dodo this morning. Screw Telstra BigPond and their bullshit data plans. Everyone – make sure your parents are getting screwed by their ISP. Have spent the last day cleaning up mum’s PC – swapping out Norton for AVG Free, moving her data over to an external drive, implementing a backup system, installing a new DVD drive, etc. Other sons mow the lawn. Just call us the Tech Support Generation.
 ******
 Have to drive five minutes down to Bargara Beach to find a semi-decent coffee. Ugh.
******
 According to some larrikin editing my Wikipedia entry:
“Some times uses the alias “Tony Harris” to backup his own arguements.” (sic)
******
Love this story on BoingBoing:
Four federal inmates were indicted Tuesday on allegations that they copyrighted their names, then demanded millions of dollars from prison officials for using the names without authorization.The inmates sent demand notices for payment to the warden of the El Reno federal prison and filed liens against his property. They then hired someone to seize his vehicles, freeze his bank accounts and change the locks on his house. Unfortunately, the person they hired turned out to be an FBI agent.
******
I have been reading up on Bush’s new Executive Order where he “directed the Treasury Department to block the U.S.-based financial assets of anyone deemed to have threatened “the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq” or who “undermin(e) efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq.” The order also enables Treasury to target those individuals who prevent “humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people”. As Bush and Friends have been responsible for 700,000+ civilian deaths in Iraq, I’m wondering if this EO means Treasury will block HIS assets.
Read the Executive Order or read an analysis of it by some experts.
******
Neet and I cracked up this morning over this clip of prisoners in the Phillipines performing “Thriller”.
by cameron | Jul 16, 2007 | Podcast, US politics
Chris Pirillo needs no introduction. Everyone knows him as an ubergeek, the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome, former host of TechTV’s “Call for Help”, and, along with his wife Ponzi, the host of Gnomedex, the technology conference made for geeks. I always think of him as the guy with the most infectious laugh I’ve ever heard.
But recently Pirillo had the AUDACITY to talk about politics on his blog and incurred some criticism. I invited him to come on GW to chat about his views in some depth.
Here are some links for further reading:
Pirillo: When Politics and Technology Collide
Scoble: A Slight Diversion into Politics
Pirillo: Ron Paul Wins My Vote
Ron Paul’s official site
WIkipedia: The Federal Reserve System
To catch some of David Cross’ material that Chris mentions, watch this link.
And for those of you interested in my 2005 interview with Noam Chomsky, here is the link.
Become part of the G’Day World conversation.
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 14, 2007 | capitalism, Podcast, Uncategorized
A great example of Christian tolerance in the US senate.
******
Chris Pirillo is getting up to speed on the problems inherent in the American system of democracy and capitalism. Interesting to see someone like Chris speaking out about this. Watch the first ten minutes of the video he’s linked to. Chris has just agreed to come on GW for a chat about the issues. Can’t wait!
******
We took the kids to the Pixar exhibition and to see the Fantastic four film today. The Pixar exhibition is worth the price of admission just to see the amazing zoetrope! I can’t recommend this enough. I was totally blown away by it and we were all voted it the highlight when we left.
As for the FF film…. well the kids loved it, and I got to watch Jessica Alba for a couple of hours. Can’t complain about that. But you don’t get to see Galactus???? WTF?? They talk about him, he is apparently about to devour Earth (starting with the Thames), the Silver Surfer flies out to confront him, but we don’t get to see him? Majorly disappointing. The film as a whole is as lightweight as the first one. It’s kind of weird to see Michael Chiklis appear a couple of times when Johnny sucks up Ben’s powers – we’ve just finished watching The Shield Season Three on DVD. God I love that show. Anyone out there got Season Four that you could “loan” me?
******
Got this email from new listener Holden today, made my morning:
I just started listening to podcasts over the last two months or so. I just wanted to tell you that your Napoleon podcast and the G’day World podcast have been entertaining and educational as I mow lawns all summer up here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I’m very glad to learn that there are other people who care about critical thinking and reason, but don’t just stop there, who want to change the world for the better. As I’m going through all the G’day back issues I was struck by #239. You really spoke to me, and even though this is about three months late, thank-you for telling it like it is. I recently went through that sort of re-inventing time. I switched from Christian ministry to the wide undefined world of writing and have never looked back.
Thanks Holden! Great to know I’m not talking into the wind. And it’s great to know that out there, somewhere, there are Christians who are thinking and reading outside of the narrow confines of the religion.
******
What’s the best way to keep a documents folder synchronized between two PCs these days? I’m going to be traveling a bit over the next month and I want to have a copy of my documents folder sitting on a portable 80GB USB hard drive to take with me. The way I see it, I have three options:
1. Move all of my documents from the hard drive they currently sit on (a bulky external USB drive attached to my Vista desktop PC) onto the small portable hard drive and just use it as my central documents storage from now on. The only concern I have is losing it while I’m on the road. Of course I can back it up locally before I leave.
2. Just before I leave, put a copy of the documents folder onto the portable drive, work from that while I’m on the road, then copy those documents back to the main drive when I get home.
3. Have some sort of solution that synchronizes the folders between the two drives every time I plug the portable drive back into the desktop. Pre-Vista I used to run Microsoft’s Foldershare but it doesn’t seem to work on Vista.
Recommendations?
UPDATE: I installed Foldershare again just to check it out an apparently it is limited to 10,000 files, so I can’t use it to synch my documents folder. I’m now trying Microsoft Synctoy which looks like it might work. I just need to remember to plug in the portable drive to the desktop when I get back from my trip to synch everything back as I can’t do it over the cloud, which would be ideal.
