by cameron | May 28, 2008 | CIA, Podcast, US politics
I just finished reading Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History Of the CIA” and thought I should talk more about it. I think this is one of the most important books that have come out in the last decade. Why? Listen to the show to find out. I start by reading out a list of countries that the CIA has committed acts of terrorism and violence in, either directly or indirectly, over the last 60 years. It’s a long, long list.
Please buy and read the book.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=038551445X&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
The music on today’s show is “Echoplex” from the new Nine Inch Nails album “THE SLIP“, which is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.
NIN encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc..
ROCK ON TRENT REZNOR!
by cameron | May 27, 2008 | Podcast
This is the longer audio piece from my chat with Jonathan Oxer. Jonathan has an RFID chip embedded in his arm which he can use to operate electronic devices in his house. Why? Listen and find out. If you haven’t yet seen the video to go with it, it’s here.
Keep up to date with Jon’s experimentation on his blog.
As a result of all the media interest in his high-tech home, Jonathan is set to host a new TV show called SuperHouse which will go to air later this year. Check out www.superhouse.tv to find out more.
The music on today’s show is “Demon Seed” from the new Nine Inch Nails album “THE SLIP“, which is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.
NIN encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc..
ROCK ON TRENT REZNOR!
by cameron | May 27, 2008 | Podcast, Video
Jonathan has an RFID chip embedded in his arm. Why? Watch and find out.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8juq2Xk6L8&hl=en]
Keep up to date with Jon’s experimentation on his blog.
As a result of all the media interest in his high-tech home, Jonathan is set to host a new TV show called SuperHouse which will go to air later this year. Check out www.superhouse.tv to find out more.
by cameron | May 22, 2008 | Australian politics, Cuba
Australia slipped two places to be ranked only the 27th most peaceful out of 140 countries on the Global Peace Index 2008, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, while neighbour New Zealand is fourth.
The USA ranked 97th, below China, Cuba and Libya.
I wonder who much coverage this will get in the MSM. Are you, as a citizen of Australia, happy with the result? Do we want to be a peaceful nation?
by cameron | May 22, 2008 | free will, Podcast
You’ve heard me say I don’t believe in free will. Well tonight I’ve got world famous author, speaker, psychologist and memeticist Dr Susan Blackmore on the show to explain why SHE doesn’t believe in free will either. We discuss the reductionist perspective, what neuroscientists she’s interviewed believe, and how to live your life once you’ve discarded the idea of free will completely.
Read Sue’s blog
Buy Sue’s book The Meme Machine
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=019286212X&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
The music on today’s show is “Discipline” from the new Nine Inch Nails album “THE SLIP“, which is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.
NIN encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc..
ROCK ON TRENT REZNOR!
by cameron | May 19, 2008 | Australian media, Podcast, science, transhumanism
In #323 I welcome back a previous G’Day World guest, one of my favourite scientists, Dr Aubrey de Grey.
Aubrey is the founder of The Methuselah Foundation, a non-profit 501c(3) organization committed to the acceleration of progress toward a cure for age-related disease, disability, suffering, and death.
They are running a special conference on aging at UCLA from June 27 – 29 and the Friday night session, with three hours of speeches from leaders in the field, is FREE. Book tickets here.
If you want to learn more about SENS, here’s a link to the show I did with Aubrey back in August 2005:
G’Day World #42 – Aubrey de Grey
The music on today’s show is “1,000,000” from the new Nine Inch Nails album “THE SLIP“, which is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license.
NIN encourage you to
remix it
share it with your friends,
post it on your blog,
play it on your podcast,
give it to strangers,
etc..
ROCK ON TRENT REZNOR!
by cameron | May 18, 2008 | Uncategorized
http://www.lulu.com/author/widgets/msf/ministorefront.swf?theme=8&showThumbnail=true&showDescription=true&showTitle=true&widgetName=Cameron+Reilly%27s+Storefront&luluID=1631203&lang=en_US&version=20080513155128
by cameron | May 12, 2008 | CIA, Iran, US politics
I’ve been reading more from Tim Weiner’s book “Legacy Of Ashes: The History of the CIA” and have finished the story about how the CIA staged a covert coup d’état against the legitimate government of Iran in 1953. You can read the salient details in Wikipedia. Note: this isn’t a “conspiracy theory” – it was confirmed by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, when she called it a “setback for democratic government” in Iran.
Basically what happened is this:
The Iranians wanted to nationalize their oil. They had done a deal with the British in 1901 to explore Iran for oil and just before WWI, Winston Churchill moved the British navy from coal-burning ships over to oil-burning ships and then basically took control of Iran’s oil production, leaving them with only 16% of the profits. The Iranians weren’t happy with the situation, to the British installed a Shah of their liking on the throne.
During WWII, Churchill invaded Iran, got rid of the Shah (who was thought to be too friendly with the Nazis) and installed his son on the throne.
After WWII, the Iranians decided to take control of their oil production back. And Churchill wasn’t happy. Britian took their case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague – and lost. So Churchill asked the American government to intervene. The President (Truman) said no. So MI6 turned to the CIA who said “sure that sounds like fun”.
They then spent millions of dollars undermining the government, spreading lies about them, hiring thugs to commit crimes around the country and then blaming it on communists, on propaganda accusing the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq of being a communist, etc. The BBC in Britian did their part, also broadcasting anti-Iranian propaganda to lend the events legitimacy.
Eventually US-backed troops stormed the Prime Minister’s offices, arrested him, and he spent the last years of his life in prison, replaced by a General Zahedi, picked by the US and Britian to be Mossadeq’s puppet successor.
What happened next? 25 years later the Iranian revolution happened, fueled by memories of the coup, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took control and the country has hated the US and Britian ever since. Can you blame them?
Of course, the US and Britian denied all of this ever happened for almost 50 years until internal CIA documents were leaked in 2000.
So – the next time you hear about how Iran “hate our freedoms” or about the US trying to overthrow a country and other “conspiracy theories”, remember – Iran 1953.
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=thepodcastnet-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=038551445X&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
by cameron | May 12, 2008 | Podcast, Video
I like the look of Vidnik:
It’s a simple program for using the built-in camera on your Mac to create movies and upload them to YouTube.
I’ve played around with Seesmic a bit as a video blogging tool but I find it’s not very podcast-friendly. Seesmic wants you to use their site to store and distribute your videos, which isn’t very useful for a podcaster who wants to create an rss feed to publish. Vidnik automatically uploads your video to YouTube and it’s easy enough to embed that into a blog post and create your own rss feed for it.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iowtr2rwdN4&hl=en]
I don’t know any way to have this download automatically to an iPod though – anyone know of a way to create a feed which will automatically pull YouTube down videos onto a portable player?
UPDATE: Just noticed that my sound is out of synch on that video above. Bad YouTube!
by cameron | May 9, 2008 | Uncategorized
How do you get a dozen of the top online personalities in Australia to talk about your product?
Here’s one recent example of very clever marketing.
A couple of weeks ago, I participated in one of the more interesting online social networking / marketing projects I’ve seen in recent years – Project Vino.
Put together by wine podcaster Hugo Sharp, it involved about a dozen Australian Twitterers who were all sent the same three bottles of wine from Kirrihill. At 7pm on April 30th, we all jumped on Twitter, opened our bottles, and then drank them. Some of us were very sensible about it, tasting and then spitting. Others were… ahem… guzzlers. Hugo was on Twitter, walking us through how to properly taste the wine, what to eat with it, etc.
But I was on Yahoo Live Video with @jjprojects and @duncanriley and @kahunagirl and @ceibner and @bronwen and @m0nty and @spigrrl and others, chatting, drinking, debating religion, philosophy, ummm… you name it.
I ended up QUITE drunk but the good news is that I was only a few meters from my bedroom – and I didn’t need to drive.
Now I’m no great expert on wine, but I really enjoyed all three bottles from Kirrihill Wines
* Companions Cabernet Merlot ‘06
* Companions Shiraz Viognier ‘06
* Tempranillo Garnacha ‘07
I especially liked the Cab Merlot but the Shiraz was the group favourite I think.
As an experiment in online buzz-building, I think it was a pretty huge success.
Think about it: most of the dozen people who were drinking, sorry, TASTING, have 1000+ followers on Twitter. And all night we were talking about the event on Twitter, talking about the wine vendor, etc.
In addition, many of us are relatively prominent bloggers and we wrote about it, like I’m doing here.
Duncan wrote about it on TechCrunch, the #1 tech blog in the world. And he also threw some video up on YouTube which is now ranked in the top five on Google for searched on “Kirrihill”. What’s that worth???
You can check out the number of times “Kirrihill” has been mentioned on Twitter.
I learned a lot about wine tasting, Kirrihill Wines and new approaches to using Twitter and Yahoo Live Video (which I’d never even heard of before). A great night. Thanks Hugo!!
