Rubénerd Blog

For those of you also living in a so called Commonwealth Realm, a jolly good, merry, happy and prosperous Queen’s Birthday to you!

Here in Australia (except for WA) we have the day off on the second monday of June which happens to be today. According to infallable Wikipedia, Canadians have the day off on the 24th of May, people in the United Kingdom have it on the first, second or third Saturday in June, and New Zealanders on the first Monday of June. I suspect many of her other realms have holidays for this:

Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; born 21 April 1926) is the queen regnant of sixteen independent states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.

None of these dates though are the Queen’s actual birthday. Don’t you just love living in a commn sense monarchy? :) I know I know, the holiday wasn’t meant for Queen Elizabeth II and is by convention not by her actual birth date, but still!

My avatar for my Twitter profile as of yesterday

With all the lunacy surrounding Senator Conroy’s hopelessly misguided crusade against the intertubes in Australia which even if we were to ignore the social implications it still technologically wouldn’t ever work… we’re now reminded that our friendly neighbours over to the east in New Zealand are also having to deal with nonsense. Simply replace "failed before it even starts filter" with "guilty when accused".

It really is blood chillingly scary stuff.

From the Creative Freedom New Zealand site:

Join The New Zealand Internet Blackout to protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.

I think what really gets to me with all this nonsense is the thought that some law makers in Australia and now New Zealand have obviously heard these ideas and written up legislation and proposals which means… they thought they were good ideas.

Normally I like to think of myself as a [mostly] rational person, but it’s hard to be cool and level headed when nonsense like this comes up. I’m already not feeling very well, and this just makes me feel worse.

I’m an Aussie by birth and given both of our countries were once British we still have those Union Jack thingys on our flags.

Apparently the redesigned New Zealand flag though still retains the Union Jack, but includes something 100% Pure New Zealand!:

Okay okay, I’m an Aussie and I couldn’t help myself :D.

We finally have cable TV in Malaysia (CNN Asia Pacific, free to air TV in Australia, Singapore and Malaysia), Rubenerd Left Wing (American sugar-coated politics, liberation, democracy etc), Elke calling Ruben a dork, bagging out New Zealand accents (again!) and congratulations to the women of Kuwait for getting the vote! News clips from CNN and the Brock Log, found through Technorati.

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 6.4MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.

Stuffing up the introduction, bagging out New Zealand accents and The Google Links Conspiracy (audio from The Gillmor Gang, just produce good content). Music by Israel Brown.

Download MP3 ↓ 10:00 minutes, 6.4MiB

You can also stream it and view its Internet Archive page.