Archive for October, 2008

Oct 31 2008

links for 2008-10-31

Published by SteveT under bookmarks

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Oct 31 2008

links for 2008-10-30

Published by SteveT under bookmarks

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Oct 30 2008

ABC bias

Published by SteveT under news,politics,rant,usa

Usually I think all reports of ABC (Australia) bias are a crock of shit. Rubbish made up by right wing nutjobs that can’t handle real reporters grilling them or their political charges.

But after watching the news last night, I’m not so sure… but not how you, or they (above), would think.

It was another story on the US election, following McCain in Pennsylvania (again). And I’m firmly convinced that the ABC’s agenda was to make all Americans look like retarded simpletons.

As polls consistently show Obama ahead on all counts, and as much verifiable evidence has McCain tanking big time, ABC (and other news outlets) seem to want to follow McCain’s death spiral like never before. And more importantly, when they showed McCain’s supporters they were the worst kind of dullards imaginable. Not just racist, but stupid, spouting falsehood after falsehood about Obama — the usual stuff — “he’s a Muslim”, “his oath of office was done with a Koran”, etc… I mean, if you’re against a guy, at least be against him for realistic reasons.

And of course, I have no doubt that this is an accurate picture of many of McCain’s supporters. But why such a heavy focus on them? As things slip away from McCain and polls show his heavy-duty supporters more and more of a minority, it seems that the ABC News wants to focus on them more than ever. As they become more irrelevant to the US, they seem more relevant to the foreign news show.

So why would this be? Sure, it’s “real”, but it just seems so unrepresentative of the way America is trending right now… as if they want to make sure to have them look like idiots…

More later if it seems to warrant it.

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Oct 29 2008

links for 2008-10-29

Published by SteveT under bookmarks

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Oct 28 2008

links for 2008-10-28

Published by SteveT under bookmarks

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Oct 28 2008

It’s Christmas already… in some places

Published by SteveT under australia,holidays

Since we moved, I now walk through Blacktown Westpoint shops everyday going from home to the station and back. And so I see retail land every day, even though the shops are shut during most of the trips.

And I’ve noticed that Christmas apparently starts in late October now.

I don’t think it started this early in previous years, and it’s not hard to know why. Retail is so scared of a sales downturn that they want Christmas to come early this year so that big sales figures come early. I can understand that, but it also can’t help but make you a little cynical about the whole thing.

I love Christmas as much as the next guy, especially with a young family to enjoy it, but October decorations just seems a bit nuts…

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Oct 27 2008

links for 2008-10-27

Published by SteveT under bookmarks

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Oct 27 2008

Angry Republicans on the loose

Published by SteveT under internet,politics,rant,usa

It appears at the moment that the Internet is awash with hordes of angry Republicans, desperately commenting and baiting and ranting on every blog comment thread on every conceivable site they can find. Whether US sites, British, Australian, whatever, no site is immune, especially mainstream news sites.

The hatred and bile from them is extraordinary … and they haven’t even lost yet. Imagine what they’ll be like when they do lose (and yes, the usual caveats still apply, it’s 10 days out, they still might not lose yet and so on).

Once again, it’s ok if you’re a Republican. The amount of whinging out there about angry Democrats and “Bush haters” in the last eight years was really not backed up in reality — sure there were angry Democrats, but they waited until they’d lost for one — and I don’t remember any serious death threats or outbursts from Dems against Bush (certainly not serious enough to warrant investigations at least.)

But angry Republicans have started already, despite the fact they haven’t lost it yet. Just got an eyeful of it on The Guardian site, the sort of media outlet that always gets it a bit worse because they’re perceivably left-leaning anyway.

But hey, as long as it stays online, who cares. If it stays virtual, we can just sit back and enjoy the show and laugh loudly at them…

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Oct 26 2008

A funny thing

Published by SteveT under family,sport,writing

A funny thing is watching Alex dance and slide across the wood floor, deciding he has to avoid the vacuum cleaner at all cost when I’m cleaning the room. He was laughing the whole time, and knew it was funny too.

A funny thing is watching Will partially imitate the Haka before the League test (Australia won easily, naturally). He really only clapped and waved his arms around, but I like that he found it interesting.

A funny thing is how Will’s really taken to singing Wiggles songs all the time now. I mean, it’s adorable, but it’s funny too. And he seems to be interested in playing cricket, which is not unexpected, and should mean much fun too…

A funny thing is that I cleaned up heaps of the house today, unpacked most everything in the main rooms, and generally made large parts of the house quite clean, which is odd, and funny, given it’s only been a couple of weeks since we moved in (last house it took months). But I like this place more, I think.

Nice day, hope to see more.

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Oct 25 2008

Easy route to frustration

Published by SteveT under family,rant,tech

Having a good Saturday, still cleaning up and unpacking, playing with the kids, enjoying the nice weekend weather, and I figure that in the night, I’ll watch some more Daily Shows and maybe The Shield. I’ve got this great new system where I can burn files straight to DVD with no conversion and play them straight through my DVD player.

But of course, that suddenly won’t work. For absolutely no discernable reason, I suddenly cannot burn DVDs at all. The stupid old damn Windows PC has had enough problems recently, without such a basic function suddenly ceasing to work. Damn we need some new laptops…

So I spend two hours trying to get something so simple to work, even downloading a whole separate program to see if it works. Nothing.

Probably should have just watched stuff in the office… oh well.

Weekends are the good times, but this doesn’t help.

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