Moved

Well, I have not removed these posts, but my blog site is now on a friends server.

Legally defining language

I remember my Austrlaian friends gleefully telling me how English is better than say German, becuase in German you need a act in parliament to change the spelling. But it seems that English is not as felxible as they would want to believe.

After all, same-sex couples still have all the rights included in the "marriage bag" and so the actual effect of reserving the term marriage to heterosexual couples is not significant enough to warrant a more extensive constitutional approval process.

Though of course you can change something by common usage. So we should all call marriage between gay people marriage and the law and other things, being the stodgy followers that they are will eventually catch up.

Sex, porn, other things, oh, and the internet

Today a friend posted a link to a humours piece on some of the trends in google trends. However, he missed one important point. As we all know from the song, The internet is for Porn! So here are some more trends.

1. Sex and Porn

Well, where else to start than the deep end? While sex is king, porn is the rapidly rising star. The top three countries for sex are India, Egypt and Indonesia. Delhi, Chennai and Cairo the top cities. I mean, where are the Americans, not to mention the French? Even Romania is leaving them for dead.




2. hentai and anime

Clearly hentai is the winner here in search, but Anime has it won in the news stakes.



but they both are still loosers when it comes to sex.



3. Sex drugs and rock and roll

Clearly Sex is better than drugs and rock and roll combined, according to the pundits. But according to the media, drugs are more significant than sex.



4. Sex and the Zeitgeist

The Google Zeitgeist lists the most popular search terms. For example, year end 2008, the top two popular search terms in Australia were Games followed by Sydney. Clearly Sex has never been up there in the search terms in Australia. Strangely Craigieburn and Cranbourne beat every capital city in Australia when it comes to searching for sex, and it would seem games.



So maybe the internet is not only about sex and porn. It's a bit disappointing really. If you read the press or listened to the politicians, you would think otherwise.

due process

One of the important keystones in a modern society is proper and due legal process. These things have been put in place with slow development over a thousand years as a result of painful lessons learned. So I wonder why we then have politicians and lawmakers, not to mention a whole host of hangers on, like religious groups, saying, we know what is best for you. Don't question us and that legal processes is just an annoying hindrance. It seems to me that there have been groups that have said that in the past, people have believed them, and then terrible things have happened, all in the name of what is good and proper.

Web watchdog changes tack after blacklist leak

THE communications regulator has been forced to change its internal processes after the address of a prohibited anti-abortion web page in its top-secret blacklist was widely distributed on the internet.

Perhaps our politicians should show their metal, let there be public debate and put in place a proper legal process and frame work.

lest we forget

While it is important to remember the lessons of war, there are many others who have fought in Australia's past for their way of life and what they believed in that also need to be remember.

• Lest we forget the aborigines who sometimes fought the white invaders who came and took their land, and sometimes their people.
• Lest we forget the aborigines who fought for the white invaders even when the whites did not give them the vote or consider them to be real people in the constitution.
  
• Lest we forget the children who were stolen from their parents because they were deemed to be unworthy.
• Lest we forget those who were sent to live in reservations because they were not white, because they were aborigines, Chinese, islanders and others.
  
• Lest we forget children held in detention for no good reason for years of their lives.

I'm sure there are many others, but these are what I wanted to write for now. Fell free to add your own.

crowd control and terrorists

Seems that their fancy crowd control system for when there is a terrorist attack had the minor problem of being reliant on the electricity grid. So any terrorist who blew up the power supply would have disabled it.



I expect that these units will end up looking like those coastal forts to keep out the Russians. It seems Australians are easily spooked and resort as a result to bizarre solutions to provide a bit of comfort. It is like Charlie Brown's blanket. Look we have speakers, we must be safe. Of course if the terrorists attacked outside the CBD there are no speakers. Maybe a mobile phone notification system would make more sense.

competitive advantage

I think it is interesting to read,with all these arguments against changing the rules, such as the carbon tax, becuase they will make our industry uncompetitve comapered to others that the same arguments were put forward by those who wanted to stop the laws preventing slavery over 100 years ago. They argued that a nation without slaves would not be able to compete with one that did have slaves. But still they (the brits) took the gutsy step of banning slavery.