Scarier than Skynet - the corporations are winning

I've posted more than a couple of times here about advancements in military robot technology that make me a little concerned (and probably make me look like a tin foil hat wearer but that's neither here nor there)

This news story from the US though leaves me seriously troubled.

WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.

Maybe I'm missing the finer detail but it seems to me that corporations in the U.S are now free to spend as much money as they can raise on making sure that the people they like get elected. They can potentially spend billions of dollars if they choose on tv advertising and all the other costs of campaigning - money that they have never before been able to kick in.

The most telling part of this case for me is the almost Orwellian name of the body who brought it to the court - Citizens United. ( funnily enough, one of the anti-internet lobby groups in the GTA universe is Citizens United Negating Technology - although it just doesn't seem so funny any more)
This isn't going to end well.

Update: got some more info that reveals that things could be worse -

"The judges also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, enacted in 2001, which barred union and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

The court's ruling leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions and did not touch a ban on unlimited donations from corporations and unions to political parties."

(from The Age)

Still, there's a whole lot of wrong about this. Supporters might (disingenuously) argue that this is a matter of free speech but if you have the money to ensure that yours is the only voice heard over and over and over, what does that do to the free speech of everyone else?

How about some fair speech?

Breaking news Breaking Bad great

So, sure - Breaking Bad has already finished its second series and the lead actor Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle) has already won two Best Actor emmys for his role in the show  but until last night I hadn't seen it so in Couch Media world, I guess this passes for breaking news.

It was just the pilot that I saw - possibly the hardest episode of a series to make because you have just under an hour (or half an hour) to set up your premise, introduce your characters and give viewers a reason to come back. Tick, tick and tick.

In a nutshell, Cranston plays high school chem teacher Walter White who is struggling to make a living and then discovers that he has inoperable lung cancer. Cheery start right. (Did I mention that he also has a mildly disabled son?) After learning just how much money is to be made in the production of crystal meth (ice), he decides to go into business, with the intention of setting up his family for the future. Despite the premise, it's not a depressing story - it's real (but not too real) and Cranston's White is a genuinely interesting and likeable character. (And it's always good to see kinda-nerds being a bit badass)

It's also won the Emmy for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series for the last two years - one was for the episode that I saw last night - guess it helps to have a good editor.

Pay Attention

A great spiel about why if you're not using technology in teaching, you're losing your students.

Countries with the Southern Cross on their flags

I've seen the stars of the Southern Cross painted, tattooed, on stickers and hand drawn in texta across the persons and vehicles of any number of  nationalistic young people in recent years. Personally I think these kinds of displays of nationalism - while often made by perfectly decent people - are a little American - over the top and tinged with a kind of intolerant tribalism.

Saying that everyone who feels proud of this country is an ignorant bogan or redneck is to oversimplify things - there is a lot to still celebrate about Australia (something that the joyless, overcritical wowsers on both sides of politics forget sometimes). The things that I like most about Oz is the laid back but practical nature of how we do things. The whole quiet achiever thing. This strikes me as the greatest sign of confidence - not needing to jump up and down and wave your arms around.

The rise of the Southern Cross as a sign of national pride is extra puzzling because it's a constellation that can be seen from most places in the Southern Hemisphere. Four other countries like it so much that they have it on their flags. You could argue pretty easily that the Federation star, with its 7 points representing the states and territories is a more distinctive symbol of national pride. (Let's overlook our colonial master's flag still perched up in the top corner - even the Barmy Army has been heard to say "get your shit stars off our flag")

The Eureka flag - which has been adopted by a range of groups from trade unions to white supremacists - could also be ripe for reclamation. Of course, it would be better if it was accomplished by some kind of meaning popular movement against unfair oppression - but like that's going to happen.

I've got nothing against the Southern Cross itself - it's a good looking group of stars and handily can be used to find south without a compass - but it's not uniquely Australian.

Australia

Brazil

Brazil actually wins in the story about why the Southern Cross is on their flag. It represents the stars they saw on the morning of the 15th of November, 1889, the day the Republic of Brazil was declared. Each star on the flag represents one Brazilian state. On top of this,

the flag portrays them as they would be seen by an imaginary observer an infinite distance above Rio standing outside the firmament in which the stars are considered to be placed.(flagspot.net)

New Zealand

Papua New Guinea

Samoa

(images from Wikipedia and in the public domain)

Exciterrifying - Augmented ID

The Astonishing Tribe (TAT) has a video up of a prototype of a system for your phone that excites and terrifies me. In essence, you point your phone cam at someone (with an account set up presumably) and it displays on screen a range of info from their social networking footprint.

I'm excited because it's another step forward in this amazing digital era we find ourselves in, where the concepts of knowledge and information are being radically reimagined every other day and terrified (ok, perhaps not that extreme but it worked well with my exciterrify portmanteau) because of the potential for evil it displays. When you think about it though, face recognition has been around for a while and who knows what the powers that be are doing with that tech. 

Or, in their words:

Augmented ID is a TAT concept that visualizes the digital identities of people you meet in real life. With a mobile device and face recognition software from Polar Rose, Augmented ID enables you to discover selected information about people around you. All users control their own augmented appearance, by selecting the content and social network links they want show to others. Modifying your augmented ID is easier than fixing your hair in real life and, of course, TAT Cascades will make sure you look great!

Time for a new hairstyle?

Time for a new hairstyle?
Originally uploaded by couchmedia

Just found a nifty iPhone app called OldBooth that makes it verrrry
easy to Photoshop your face into other styles.

Beautiful and simple interface.

Dreaming

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

Because C3PO needs a more obvious package.

It seems like almost every day Youtube gives me something to be thankful for. I'm not sure where to start with this but it does appear to have answered my questions about what Star Wars would have been like with more C3POs and Darth Vaders - dancing badly and in too-much-information tights.

Thankyou late 70s French tv.

The guy who did the spider drawing to pay a bill has a whole website

You must have seen the email detailing the amusing email exchange between a guy trying to pay his power bill with a drawing of a seven legged spider and his power company right? It's gold.

Anyway, I found out today that he in fact has a whole website of similar exchanges - either he's a massive smart arse or a very imaginative writer. Either way, it's entirely worth a look.

Personal highlights for me include his response to a client asking him to do some graphic design work for free (a not-uncommon request in the design world) as well as creating some pie charts.

The general modus operandi seems to be responding to irritating and/or officious requests with a beautiful hybrid of rambling, absurdity, trolling and sarcasm. I'm not normally that great a fan of sarcasm - on its own it's generally what people who overrate their intelligence use to feel witty - but in combination with everything else, it works a treat.

Other posts seem to be even more random, possibly grabbing images from social networking sites and concocting bizarre stories around them. One resulted in a threatening legal letter (which he of course took the opportunity to play with) before agreeing to "change the name" of the target - the name which funnily enough remains listed in the legal exchange.

In fairness though, the guy does have a very clear message on the complaints page of his site to

Go away

this site contains none of your business
and is for my amusement only.

You do not have permission to access the content and if you do decide to enter this site, you agree to waive all rights.

From what I can gather, this guy is also from Adelaide (for which he has my deepest condolences)

WiFi winners

It's been a little while since I've visited Passive Aggressive Notes.com - a very amusing site that allows people to share some of the notes that get left around the place.

This particular post made me lol - mainly because it reminded me of the all-time best/worst wifi network name I have ever seen. I was riding through the industrial part of Footscray (near Melbourne) just before Christmas and my phone asked me if I wanted to connect to a network called cuntseepage.Classy.

Belated Win

Love this pic that I found up in the Win section (the antithesis of the Fail section) on the ICanHasCheezburger.com site - natural home of lolcats.

I can only imagine the neihbours wondering if this guy is taking the piss. (sorry)

Penisly? Oh Portia De Rossi, is there anything you can't say?

From old sitcoms to new (and apparently cancelled but never mind) - just started watching a new(ish)y called Better Off Ted.

Taking laser guided aim at corporate culture but with a strong cast of likable characters and some sparkling writing, this show is quickly growing on me. So far each ep has also made beautiful fun of corporate videos and even, in the last ep I watched, foretold a recent problem where a company's webcams (I think) didn't recognise black people.

Portia De Rossi absolutely pwns with immaculate delivery of lines like these:

I bought you some new boxers - they didn't highlight your assets. Penisly.

And

Walk away tall. Walk away - tall.

Whoever knew that the dad on Growing Pains was cool?

So it turns out that not only did Alan Thicke write the theme songs for Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life, but he also worked with Richard Pryor in his 70s heyday.

And to think that I just thought he was a funny looking twat in a pisspoor 80's sitcom.

This interview in The Onion'sAV Club tells all.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/alan-thicke,36751/

Loving: Stuff white people like - the Melbourne version

I seem to have been in something of a Melbourne frame of mind lately - enjoying a few weeks down there, catching up with best friends and family, going to Meredith - complaining about the country-ness of the music scene there and then promptly stocking up on "good" alterna-country as soon as I got back to Canberra, and reading (and loving) Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap.

So I guess I got a few extra lols when my housemate pointed me towards this blog post - Stuff White people like - the Melbourne Version.

A couple of the highlights:

Not Liking Football
Sport is popular with the wrong type of white Melburnian, and the most popular sport amongst these people is Australian football. It is no accident that Melbourne is considered Australia’s sporting capital AND its art capital because art is the best way to hide your love of football. In the white Melburnian brain, art and football are mutually exclusive. If you profess an interest in one, everybody will assume you hate the other. Melburnian white people do this to hide their shame, because all of them carry around little shards of pain in their hearts caused by North Melbourne’s shock loss to Adelaide in the 1998 Grand Final, or the 1996 merger of the Fitzroy Lions with the Brisbane Bears, or Essendon’s agonising one point loss to Carlton at the ‘G in 1999.

This one resonated particularly with me as a North Melbourne supporter, remembering only too well an increasingly drunken pub crawl around Richmond on Grand Final Day in 1998 with some close friends and realising in almost slow motion that North was done for.

I got nailed by a few other items but mostly recognised people or at least types that I've known over the year: most of it fortunately relates to the hippy trendies I've known but never entirely bought into the bullshit of.
This comment in particular though got me:

Talking about how Meredith isn't as good as it used to be (despite the fact that most people who go these days only started going a few years ago)

(At least I was there in 99 - and still have the tshirt to prove it)

I've never been to Confest but love this description:

Confest
Filled with oppressively friendly men who ‘just want to give you a massage,’ Confest is sort of what you imagined the seventies to be like, except with a lot more AIDS and variants of hepatitis. White Melburnians like Confest because they get to experiment with creating a perfect society, which for them means being able to fuck anyone they want. Don’t sit down in the sauna because it’s the equivalent of touching a thousand naked and sweaty assholes.

The Wire - 100 greatest quotes

If you haven't converted to The Wire-ism yet, why don't you take a moment to hear the truth and feel it.



(There aren't any major spoilers in this one but if you haven't seen the whole thing, I'd stay away from the second 100 greatest quotes vid as there are some major ones)

Getting it done - 2009 style

Last year was a pretty good year for me - all things considered.

Maybe it is the looming 4-0 but after years of pfaffing about, I decided that it was time to start taking action and I decided to make 2009 my year of determination. Both in terms of helping me to determine who I really am as well as being determined to make some progress on a number of life things that I've been dissatisfied with.

No more would I see, think or hear about something and say to myself - I really must do that sometime - my new resolution was to actually do it. No more excuses, laziness or procrastination (which I must say I'm bloody brilliant at - it can sometimes take me days or weeks before I even realise that I'm procrastinating about doing something) - just doing. As Yoda says, there is no try, there is just do or do not. Even failing is still doing on many levels.

So Mr bloody Wonderful - what did you do then?

Well, the short highlights list (and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to miss a few things here):

• Took a tandem hang glider flight
• Travelled to Tasmania and more extensively around Darwin and Kakadu
• Started learning piano
• Became a dual AUS/UK citizen
  
• Presented at a (reasonably large) education conference
• Took up mountain biking (strained back aside I'm calling this a win)
• Put a towbar and bike rack on the car (not huge but had been on the list for years)
• Rode some very pretty rail trails, including a ride longer than any I've done before in a day (100km)
• Made some real progress on the second draft of my loooong neglected script
• Lost 8kg
• Put some solid work into improving my posture
• Bought some Aboriginal paintings
• Went away for a cycling weekend with a group of complete strangers 
• Developed some useful work skills
  

Mostly the achievement for me came in gradually shifting my mindset to be more focussed and determined.

Taking the time to understand how I work and particularly how to get past the equally determined procrastinator in me has also been really useful. Something I worked out very early on was that I've long used relationships and the attendant lack of independence while in one (or the quest for a new one when out of them) as my do-nothing excuse numero uno. Which has clearly been unfair to the girlfriends I've had (and loved) - in terms of using them as the excuse for my own lack of will and perhaps even trying to blame them, knowing all the while that it was probably actually my fault.

So to be sure of this, item number one was that the year had to be a solo mission - remove the excuse/scapegoat and take complete responsibility. So now I know that there are times when I can be completely slack (I had hoped to finish the second draft of the script entirely rather than the 10 - 15% I currently have done - though I'm pretty happy with the quality so far at least) and times when I can push myself to get things done. On reflection, I probably haven't actually answered the question of whether relationships have slowed me down or just been an excuse (and I am very sorry for any confusion I may have caused on this front as well - a man's not a camel, as the poets say and my head has been turned a couple of times this year before I got back to the project.

As for this year - probably still leaning towards keeping things going as they are at present - I'm really enjoying the sense of taking control of my destiny and the lack of complications that singledom brings. Honestly though, who knows what might happen - at least now I think I have enough self-awareness to know what's an excuse and what's an obstacle.

So for this year - the plan is more of a sketch at this stage but so far:

• Finish 2nd draft of Boonsville script.
• Try Fencing
• Piano – continue lessons and practice
• Present or co-present at an International educonference
• Organise 2011 NZ cycle tour
• Under 90 kg
• Have at least $12,000 in savings by setting a solid budget and sticking to it
• Resume Couch Media blog
• Resume Gamer/Learner blog
• Become a Moodle/Equella/Wimba guru
• Focus

There's probably still more - but the wheels are slowing turning and I've come back here.

So what about you - how are you going with your goals/dreams/etc and what do you want/need to do?

Can't stop listening to Monsters of Folk

It was only a few weeks ago that I was sitting at the Meredith Music Festival, Melbourne's alterna-music mecca, wondering to myself if the current trend in music toward the folky/country-edged had run its course.

Band after band seemed to be churning out very competent and polished performances that just left me thinking meh. They seemed to be drawing directly from the old school sounds of 50s and 60s country and I really just found myself longing for some good solid dirty rock or even just something with some edge. Scene faves Wagons and Kitty, Daisy & Lewis  seemed to fit particularly into this mire but there were a number of other less memorable bands that were much the same.

The one artist who really seemed able to work this style was the great Paul Kelly - even Jon Spencer's Heavy Trash had me wandering off for a bite to eat half way through the set. (All of this might well be more a reflection of my non-addled state of mind, an overreaction to drinking/etc too much last time I hit Meredith and trying to balance the scales by swinging to far the other way this time around or maybe I'm just old and/or jaded)

Anyway, track forward to a small end of the year cd binge at JB (2010 plan is to budget much more effectively but any pre-2010 purchases don't count, right) - where I pick up new stuff from Calexico, Roland S Howard (vale), The Dead Weather (new Jack White supergroup), Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Monsters of Folk. All of them solid gold selections based on buzz read or heard from reputable sources.

It's Monsters of Folk though that has utterly dominated the cd player since I bought it on Thursday. This made all the more impressive by the fact that there's actually a small crack in the cd that renders the first 3 tracks pretty well unlistenable. I couldn't tell you exactly what it is about this album that has me so enthralled - one or two of the tracks veer dangerously close to the wrong side of the country line for me but taken as a whole, it just seems perfectly balanced and flawless. It's definitely got twang and all the other country touches that I heard at Meredith, there's just something extra in there that takes it to a whole new level.

Of course, it's not really fair comparing some well-liked and highly skilled Melbourne acts with a super group composing M Ward, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis from Bright Eyes and Jim James from My Morning Jacket, all hugely regarded artists in their own right. For me the issue just seems to be that the Americans do it better and just get it more. Having been out of Melbourne for coming on to a decade now, I can't help but wonder (slightly tongue in cheek) whether the RRR mafia that guides the Melbourne sound has lost it's touch.

Or maybe it's a Melbourne thing. (though I have made the same criticisms of the Canberra music scene)

Anyway, if you haven't heard much of Monsters of Folk, here's a few samples

Daybreakers - from the people who brought you Undead

I remember hearing murmurs of The Spierig brothers working on some vampire film and thinking - hmm, this could be interesting - but imagine my surprise when I found this trailer for it. (Watch the HD one if you can, go on, treat yourself).



Apparently coming out in Oz on the 21st of Jan.

I have to confess that this post was initially going to titled - Claudia Karvan in a sci fi vampire film OMFG - there may be a small fancrush going on there (but I do think she's a great actor)

Here's the Undead trailer if you haven't already seen it

Share your Mogress

Share your Mogress

The emergence of Skynet - Part (what part am I up to now?)

The language is slightly sensationalistic (but we are talking about killer robots here so can you blame them?) but this story in The Register offers just one more sign of our impending robotic overlords.

An American "Reaper" flying hunter-killer robot assassin rebelled against its human controllers above Afghanistan on Sunday, and a manned US fighter jet was forced to shoot the rogue machine down before it unilaterally invaded a neighbouring country...

It wasn't clear from the US military announcement whether the erratic death-bot had turned on its masters and was planning an attack on critical US logistics bases located north of the Afghan border, or whether it had sickened of reaping hapless fleshies like corn and was hoping merely to escape. Alternatively the machine assassin may merely have succumbed to boredom or - just possibly - a mundane, non-anthropomorphic technical fault of some kind.

 (Originally tweeted by William Gibson)