G’Day World Video – Peter Ellyard discusses “Designing 2050”

by | Jun 5, 2008 | climate change, environment, Podcast, Video

I had the pleasure once again today to catch up with Dr Peter Ellyard, Australia’s leading futurist, one of our most popular public speakers and, of course, author of the historic first book published by TPNTXT:

“Designing 2050: Pathways to sustainable prosperity on spaceship earth”.

The auction for two signed proof copies of the book can be found here. The auction ends 15-Jun-08 22:11:27 AEST.

You can buy a new copy of “Designing 2050”, either in paperback or ebook format, here.

Watch the video interview:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_iRu1uOx8A&hl=en&fs=1]

Exxon says one thing, does the opposite

by | Jun 5, 2008 | science, Uncategorized

From the “Just-Cuz-We-Say-We’re-Going-To-Do-Something-Doesn’t-Mean-We-Will” department:

The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that ExxonMobil has just announced “for the second consecutive year” that it is cutting funding to groups which promote skepticism about global warming. The groups that are supposedly being cut off include the Capital Research Center, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, and the Institute for Energy Research. However, CSPI points out, “Each group continued to receive Exxon funding in 2007 after the company’s first announcement that it would discontinue the payments. Exxon did not immediately return calls seeking comment on how serious it was in following through on its plans.”

(Source: Integrity in Science Watch, June 2, 2008 via PRWatch.org)

It’s easy to companies to make a big splash, put out some advertising, put out a press release, but how often do they actually follow through? And who holds them responsible when they don’t? Perhaps we need more people like Stephen Mayne, who buy shares in these companies, and then rock up to their Annual General Meeting with a video camera to ask the hard questions.

Re-inventing Politics – The Cameron System

by | Jun 4, 2008 | Australian politics

On Twitter this afternoon I made a crack about how the two-party system we have in Australia is, I believe, fundamentally broken. Someone asked me how I would improve it. This is what I came up with on the fly. This isn’t something I’ve given any thought to previously, so it’s probably full of holes as big as Barnesy’s mouth, but you know me, I’m a shoot-first, think-later kinda guy. I’m certain it isn’t even slightly original. It’s probably discussed in Politics 101 at university but as I didn’t go to university, I missed out.

Let’s scrap all of the political parties.

In fact, let’s scrap elections completely.

Why couldn’t it work like the jury system.

We set up an online Bill submission system. Citizens, businesses, lobby groups, etc, could all enter in their submissions for new laws they want enacted.

Public servants would then arrange for 50 or 100 citizens to be selected at random from the community, jury style, to hear the arguments for and against each submission. After they have heard the evidence and debated it in private, the jury will vote to see which submission deserve further investigation. Two small committees will then be established from the public service to examine the merits of each submission – one for and one against.

Once the committees have their presentations ready, another “jury” will be called to hear the respective arguments. They will hear the “for” argument and the “against” argument, just like hearing the prosecution and the defense in a legal case. Again, this “jury” will deliberate in private and then vote either for or agains the bill.

And so on and so forth.

And we treat being a member of one of these juries with the same seriousness and legal ramifications as we do being a member of a jury today. Tampering with a jury carries maximum penalties.

The benefits? Here are some off the top of my head.

  • even if we fly everyone to Canberra for the deliberations, it’s going to save the country millions of dollars a year. The 2004 Federal Election cost $120 million. I have no idea what it costs us every year to run the MPs, but it can’t be pretty. In my system, it would be legislated that the jurors would get leave from their employers at full pay while they were on jury duty. Small businesses (under $10 million in annual revenue) would be compensated for this expense.
  • we would get rid of professional politicians for good and all of the problems that this system entails. Lobby groups wouldn’t be able to buy off anyone, because juries would rotate constantly. Nobody gets to retire from politics and become a director of a mining company as a reward for Bills passed or get paid $US500,000 per speaking engagement.
  • we’d get rid of party politics. Hooray.
  • it won’t just be the wealthy members of society making the decisions. Federal backbenchers now get paid $127,000 pa plus benefits whereas half the households in Australia have a pre-tax income of less than $80,826. And that’s leaving out the politicians who are already insanely wealthy such as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull.

So – as always feel free to tell me where I’m wrong. You know I love a good debate.

(photo by tassie303)

GMAIL – Filtering many messages at once

by | Jun 4, 2008 | Uncategorized

Here’s something I learned this morning – how to quickly set up a Gmail filter to delete multiple annoying messages. This may not be news to most of you but as it was a new discovery for me, I thought I’d share it.

Find Annoying Messages – you know those ones that you find yourself deleting day after day after day from the same people? Some of them will be from mailing lists you signed up for when you decided you really were doing to take your diet seriously – this time, I mean it, I really, really mean it – until you re-discovered the delights of the Timus Tamus.

Check Annoying Messages – Of course you can open up the emails and click on the link to unsubscribe yourself from the mailing list, but this is much quicker. Until today I didn’t realize I could filter multiple messages at once.

The you tell Gmail you want to “Filter Messages Like These”:

Gmail creates an “OR” boolean filter which you can then tell it to delete.

So from then on, I hope, Gmail will automatically delete (or you could tell it to mark them as read and archive them, just in case you might want to read them later) all future emails from any of those addresses.

Okay… only 549 more messages to deal with this morning before I deserve an espresso….

Aussie Startups in Aust Financial Review

by | Jun 3, 2008 | Australian media

Renai LeMay did a story on Aussie start-ups in today’s AFR. But, of course, I can’t link to it online, because the zombies running the Fin still have it locked up tighter that a fish’s asshole. Memo to Fairfax – it’s 2008! HELLO?

Anyhoo, the article is also up on MIS Magazine’s website and you can read it here. I love that MIS Magazine is still called MIS, which apparently comes from the latin malum in se “wrong in itself”. So true, so true.

Read the article here.

It’s called ‘Funds drought hurts web hopes” and is basically saying that most if not all Aussie online startups are hurting from lack of funding. I kind of agree and kind of disagree.

Look – sure – if we all had a few million, I’m sure we’d be doing things differently. We could hire more people, invest in better infrastructure, hire some sales people, etc.

However, I’m not sure a lack of funding is necessarily a bad thing.

I’m sure we can all rattle off a bunch of start-ups in the US which raised a bucket load of money, only to be gone a few years later. Why? Because you have to learn to crawl before you can walk. Bootstrapping a startup, with little funds or people, forces you to work on the basics. What service do we provide? Who do we provide it to? What problem are we solving? How do we make money from solving it?

The benchmark that we seem to give to online startups is, I think, unhealthy. Unless they have a constant growth curve that looks like the Mt Everest, and are raking in the cash, we think EPIC FAIL.

However, I look at it a completely different way. I’m trying to build something that I will still be running in 20 years time. Something that can make a difference. Something I can have fun with. Something that will let me do what I want, when I want, where I want with whomever I want.

So check it – I haven’t had a job for nearly four years. I sit at home, playing on my Macbook Pro, talking to cool people around the world and getting paid to do it. I take my kids to school, pick them up, hang out with friends whenever I want – and I have fun doing it. I have zero stress in my life. Sure – I could easily spend a coupla mill. But at the end of the day, when I compare how I’m living today, to how I was living four years ago, I know which I prefer.

So how should we define success for a start-up? Is it a business with a billion dollar market cap, or a business that is doing good work, or a business which is allowing someone to follow their dream or a business which is making ends meet? Or perhaps its all of these things?

Here’s the thing about reading mainstream media – and I say this with all respect to my friends who work as journalists, editors and the like – the MSM does NOT want you to leave your work and build a start-up. They want you to conform – to sit in your little cubicle and live the Aussie dream, working 80 hours a week for the man, not thinking outside the square, not taking any risks outside of your footy tipping, just being a good obedient consumer and doing what you’re told.

Rudd’s burying the Haneef inquiry?

by | Jun 1, 2008 | Australian politics

More evidence that it doesn’t matter which one of the major parties is in power, the same game is played:

The narrow terms of reference were drafted to prevent any inquiry into the role played by Howard and his ministers. The inquiry was asked to report on “the arrest, detention, charging, prosecution and release of Dr Haneef, the cancellation of his Australian visa and the issuing of a criminal justice stay certificate”. Its instructions, however, are limited to identifying “any deficiencies in the relevant laws or administrative and operational procedures and arrangements of the Commonwealth and its agencies, including agency and interagency communication protocols and guidelines”.

The Rudd government’s inquiry is designed to cover-up the essential character of the Haneef witch-hunt, as well as Labor’s role in supporting it until the whole case fell apart. Last July 12, while Haneef was still being detained without charge, Kevin Rudd declared he had “confidence” in the AFP to “handle this manner in an appropriate way” and reiterated that Labor would retain the anti-terrorism laws if it won office. Labor’s proposal for an inquiry only emerged amid widespread popular disgust at Haneef’s victimisation.

(link)

The real reason behind high oil prices

by | Jun 1, 2008 | Iraq, US politics

You won’t hear this talked about on TV:

The hoax of Peak Oil – namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity – has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors. Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab OPEC producers. The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations.

(link)

Former White House Press Secretary Slams Bush

by | May 28, 2008 | US politics

Scott McClellan, Former White House Press Secretary, has written a scathing memoir about his time as the spokesperson for the Bush White House (from July 2003 to April 2006). The book, he says, discusses “the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”

Apparently McClellan positions himself as the poor innocent guy who was fed lies by the White House and ended up looking like an idiot. Personally I don’t buy it. This is the same lame story all of the American leaders have been giving during Senate and Congressional hearings over the last few years:
“Well, shucks, if I’d known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have said/done those things.”

It’s the standard “get out of jail” card and it smells of bullshit to me. It was obvious to everybody with a slender grasp of the facts that the Bush White House was bullshitting about Saddam. There were plenty of people arguing against their case. If you’re going to stand up in front of the world and put a story out there, like McClellan did every day for three years, then you had better be sure that story is true and correct. As someone in the comments on the Politico site said, he should have put his country (and the truth) first, and his obsequious toadying to Bush last.

Read more.