Decided to archive this news graphic here for posterity, might be funny to look back on in a few years. Was lifted from the ABC News website on the 25th, I’m assuming as a product of a publicly funded company I have permission to use it here, or barring that there’s some fair use clause in there somewhere.
Sheesh, I feel as though I need to drop economics as my minor and take legal studies instead. Copyright is perhaps one of the few things more broken than DRM and my old sandals.
A case of another leader who started with a lot of promise but failed to deliver like so many other politicians, so they were replaced. Sounds like Japan.
The Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met with the state premiers this morning; allegedly the response was mixed. I’m hoping it’s in part because one of them said something this:
Kevin, I’m copping so much heat and ridicule for being a member of the political party that wants to implement this misguided Great Firewall of Australia, could you please tell Senator Conroy to stop!? Please!? You’re killing me mate! *whimper*
Hey, we can only hope, right? :(
It’s that nonsensical idea we thought common sense and overwhelming evidence against its effectiveness would kill once and for all, but here we are on the brink of the introduction of the Great Firewall of Australia. Whooptie-friggen-do.
Aussie PM Kevin Rudd with Barack Obama
Reading the Adelaide Advertiser online this morning I noticed this photo of Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama. According to the article, Kev and Barack have had their first formal meeting which aside from some awkwardness regarding troop deployments in Afghanistan (which most Australian’s don’t support), it went really well.
Barack Obama gives Kevin Rudd the thumbs up
The US President has made much of his rapport with the Prime Minister after their first face to face talks in Washington. Reports of the meeting carried around the world have described the pair as political "soul mates".
"I think he’s doing a terrific job, and I’m looking forward to partnering with him for some years to come," Mr Obama said after meeting Mr Rudd for more than an hour.
Mr Rudd has said it was good to have the US "back on board" on world economics and global warming.
I just have to say this, right up front, that the relief I feel seeing our new PM with America’s new President is overwhelming. Whenever I saw photos of our former conservative PM John Howard standing with George W. Bush it made me shiver and cringe more than nails on a blackboard. To be fair, they were suited for each other!
It’s official ladies and gentleman, Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is now a Twitterling! You can follow him at: http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM.
I sent him a message yesterday:
@KevinRuddPM G’day sir, great to see you here! Looking forward to your messages.
Now we just need at least some sort of signal that Barack Obama is still tweeting and I’ll be happy. Oh and if you could fire Senator Conroy Mr Prime Minister, I’d be even more happy.
Suffice to say, I’m not holding my breath for Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to start using Twitter. There’s still time for you though sir… look, even Wikimedia Commons has a profile picture for you, ready to go!
The great thing about disjointed weblog posts is that they can contain lots of good, though unrelated and useless, material. So much so that I would never dream of creating one and uploading it, let alone dream of creating one and uploading it. Can’t wait to get my microphone and mixer from Singapore back so I can start putting this material back on the Rubenerd Show and letting this blog get back to what it’s supposed to be about!
Was just reading the Aussie ABC News. I have to make that distinction because there’s also an American ABC. I wonder if there’s an Argentinean ABC? Or a Dutch ABC? Okay that last one made no sense. According to the first mentioned ABC, the Beijing Olympics starts tomorrow. It’s funny how my dad was in Beijing just last week on a business trip and was talking about how crazy everything is getting over there right about now, and how terrible the air really is!
ASIDE: Right about now. The funk soul brother. Check it out now. The funk soul brother. Right about now. The funk soul brother. Check it out now. The funk soul brother. Right about now… ’bout now… ’bout now… ’bout now.
I’d say I’m boycotting the 2008 Olympics by not posting anything else about it and not watching any of it, but it would be a shallow admission from me. I never watch any of the Olympic games anyway, even the one in Sydney! Other than MotoGP and Formula 1, sport to me holds as much fascination potential as sitting on the verandah watching paint grow, or standing next to a wall watching grass dry. Is it possible to grow paint? Get some computer game Olympic events together with nerds from around the world and then I might consider… nah, it would still be boring.
Am I the only person who thinks gymnastics barely qualifies as an Olympic sport?
You know what would make an interesting Olympic event? Merge all the sports together into one event. Imagine it: a rhythmic gymnist would need to throw a soccer ball to someone who has to kick it between two water polo nets in a pool being traversed by butterfly and freestyle swimmers but only after a person has high-jumped the long-jumper into a mat next to the pool that’s being raised up by a weightlifter who’s wearing a bulletproof vest being shot at from a distance by a target shooter as she’s diving off a board above a rhythmic gymnist who would need to throw a soccer ball… the entire Olympics could be broadcast and got over with in 2 minutes. PATENT PENDING.
I’m sitting at the Boatdeck Cafe coffee shop in Mawson Lakes (Google Maps) watching the news on a very swish plasma TV mounted on the wall with what I assume is some sort of metallic bracket system, or lots and lots and lots of double sided tape. Can you get industrial strength double sided tape? The coffee here is fantastic.
Kevin Rudd, our PM. I couldn’t bring myself to post a photo of Paris Hilton.
The current news headline reads "Is Obama Ready To Lead?". The first person they asked was Kevin Rudd, our PM who’s a member of the Labor party which is broadly equivalent to the Democrats in the US, fair enough. The next person was… Paris Hilton. Suffice to say only 50% of the interviews were worth watching! It begs the question though, why do they think someone like her would be useful in providing political analysis? Are they using her as an example of what Average Joe or Jane is thinking at this point? If that’s the case, what an insult to Joe and Jane!
Seven News Adelaide, from Wikipedia
Well look at that, the next news story is about winter in Australia, and how it’s one of the coldest on record. It was snowing in Orange, NSW last night! And Jane Doyle now has platinum bleached blond hair? Oh dear.
Speaking of commercial airliners, got a suspiciously flattering comment from Jim Kloss yesterday on one of my posts over the last few weeks as he takes his much deserved holiday break next to a picturesque lake, which I’m sure he’s convinced himself is better than some Mawson Lake thing… and probably for good reason! He made a comment about how he flew in a Boeing 757 to get there, and how cramped the seats were, and if there was anything I could do to improve the situation, presumably before his return flight.
I spent all night discussing the situation with some friends, contacts and grilled cheese sandwiches in the aviation industry and determined that the fastest and most effective way to improve the seating conditions in narrow body jet airliners would be to fake an emergency recall notice for all narrow-bodies. As such action would no doubt result in my own incarceration, I’ve instead chosen to include a picture of a person in a bear costume:
I wore a teddy bear costume once. It gave people the wrong idea though.
And to end this useless post, did you know Singapore Airlines is one of the only airlines that operates an entirely wide-body commercial airliner fleet? And that Singapore Airlines is not in fact from Portugal, as the name would imply. Singapore Airlines services Adelaide and Perth, but I’m not sure about Talkeetna, Anchorage, Fairbanks or Singapore though.
I’ve never been to Portugal. My dad has been to Lisbon on business many times. I can take comfort in knowing that his Spanish is quite strong, but not his Portuguese. It’s not that I resent him as much as I just don’t like the fact that he got to go somewhere I didn’t, and that I resent him for that.
This isn’t a political blog, and I love screenshots, so instead of writing up a long dry post about Australian politics I’m just going to post some images. The gist of it: The coalition’s and John Howard’s reign of conservative evil has ended: Kevin Rudd and Labor won the election! Yay!
Hopefully we can look forward to pulling Aussie troops out of Iraq (why did John Howard support George W. Bush?), improving the technology and education sectors, finally combatting global warming and critically improving Australia’s relationship with Asia, all of which John Howard genuinely screwed up. Political promises being what they are, right? ;-)
I just came back from the Australian High Commission on Napier Rd here in Singapore after casting my vote in the 2007 Australian federal elections!
If you don’t know much about Australian politics, John Howard of the Liberal party (liberal doesn’t mean the same thing here as it does in the United States, the Liberal party is “conservative”) has been in power for over a decade now and basically acted like George W. Bush’s other sidekick on most things such as the Iraq war, rejecting the Kyoto protocol, backwards views on immigration and native Australians, not to mention various scandals… and the fact he has no charisma at all which is very embarrassing when he goes overseas!
The other major party is the Labor party which shares many things in common with Labour in the UK. The leader Kevin Rudd seems to have his head screwed on a lot better than Howard especially when it comes to education and technology, so I voted for Labor #2.
But as usual I voted for The Greens as number 1, headed by Senator Bob Brown. Ever since the Democrats have faded from relevancy The Greens have been a vocal minority. Some of their stances on issues are obviously quite controversial, but I find myself agreeing with everything they do. It’s like voting without your conscience getting pissed off at you for voting for the lesser of two evils when you vote Coalition or Labor.
And there ends my coverage of the Australian 2007 federal elections. All contained in one post, not bad right?
The random music and iLife rant at 0200 episode!
Insomnia is a bitch, I’m related to Kevin Rudd, Jamiroquai’s virtual insanity, recording a podcast at 0200, great welcome back forum posts, thanking y’all, viagra, TedPod passes 100 episodes, alphabetical order sucks, jetlag, evil sleeping cycles, shocking people, really disappointing iLife 2008 release, dumbing down iMovie, subtle Final Cut Express persuasion speculation, stealing bread and shirts, British Apple advertisements, MacBreak Weekly ratholes, wiping operating systems, big arse apple juicers, self consciousness and why I can’t do video, age and cynicism, online newspapers, genealogy and family trees, convicts going to Australia, Mary Wade to us, living in Singapore, maddening mysterious Champs-Élysées song, Avril Lavigne tries to sing Japanese, slurred stress importance, sitting in a Singaporean coffee shop and making the ultimate kickarse juice!
Download MP3 to listen ↓ 42:00 minutes, 19.20MiB
You can also stream this episode and view its Internet Archive page.
Hi! I'm Ruben Schade and this is my labour of love blog from beautiful Singapore and Sydney.
I also lurk on Twitter, Flickr, Google Reader and lots more places.
