November 04, 2004
David Brin
Used to be a science fiction author - and a good one. Now he's just another moonbat:
Demonstrating that history is too weird ever to have been made up, the new 21st Century Neoconservatism has forged a bizarre alliance among several major groups with very little discernable ideological common ground, other than a shared hatred of "liberals." That is, there appears to be very little common ground, until you probe more deeply. What could possibly unite this coalition whose chief components are: 1. A sub-set of aristocrats seeking (with great success) to use government as a free source of new wealth.There's this thing known in science-fiction fandom as the "brain eater", which is presented as the explanation for a formerly great author who suddenly starts writing nothing but drivel.* Well, the brain eater got Brin. * In the case of Robert Heinlein, this was almost literal; in his case it was a stroke that left him with limited blood flow to his brain for years.
2. A sub-set of messianic "Left Behind" Christianity that actively hungers for a final confrontation between Good and Evil, culminating in a stage-drama end of the world predicted in Revelations.
3. A movement of doctrine-focused intellectuals -- many of whom are neither Christians nor aristocrats -- pushing a particularly aggressive version of nationalism with a theoretical, neo-platonic basis and its own fervid sense of non-religious but messianic mission.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:34 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 03, 2004
One Thing's For Sure
After this, no-one's going to trust exit polls ever again.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:52 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Are We There Yet?
Don't look at me! All I know is that Bush is going to win*, so you guys get out there and vote!
If you're after actual information, well then: The Llamabutchers are liveblogging the whole election. They won't sleep until the deal is done!Ace is busy as ever. When you see Kim Richards, you know it's good. * See here.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:02 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 02, 2004
Hey, I Was Using That!
I'm Mind-Numbingly Boring!
Take Just How Interesting Are You? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.
(via The Cheesemistress)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:11 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 01, 2004
Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me
Cool lyrics of the day:
Our lives have to dieExplanation here.
Of that there's no help.
My favourite way to end them
Is the orb-weaver spider's whose pedipalp
Enters the female pudendum. Then dies on the spot
His corpse there still stuck,
Left for his rivals to curse at. He would rather die than not get to fuck -
Personally I reckon it's worth it.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:50 PM | Comments (21) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Reason
Via Peeve Farm, here is the basic reason why we must never let Western civilisation fall, whether it is to the Communists, the Fascists, the Islamists, or any of the other -ists running around doing nothing good: Because we outcool them by a trillion to one.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:20 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Day Of Decisions
And so at long last we come to the day when the people must choose, when an entire nation will hold its breath, confident but not certain that they chose right, that the horse they have backed in this most important of races will win.
Yes, it's Melbourne Cup time again. Meanwhile in America they will be voting for the man who will, effectively, be the leader of the world for the next four years. Or not, in the unlikely event that John Kerry wins. While I can only really give President Bush a C on domestic policy and a B on foreign policy, for an aggregate B-, Senator Kerry gets a big fat F because no-one, including Kerry himself, can say what his policies actually are. (Though he has assured us that he does in fact have some.) I do expect that President Bush will win, based on our experience with the polls here in Australia. In many ways the American election is the Australian election writ large. It's not the same, of course; John Howard here could campaign on his record of nine years of economic growth, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, and budget surpluses (though admittedly not low taxes). President Bush has had to contend with the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the financial aftershocks of September 11, and footing most of the bill for the War on Terror and the reconstruction of Afghanistan and Iraq. But we do have in common a right-of-centre leader who is solidly committed to the War, and a left-wing challenger who, well, isn't. Mark Latham is something of a thug, where Kerry is an elitist through-and-through, but they share a contempt for the very people they claim to represent. Howard and Bush, on the other hand, share an effective common touch. The polls in Australia were predicting a very close race right up until the election, many of them indeed giving it to Latham; so much so that even Tim Blair was convinced that Latham was going to win. Of course, in the end, we had if not a landslide then certainly a comfortable victory for John Howard and the Liberals* with an increased majority in the House of Representatives and a new-found majority in the Senate, the first time in over twenty years that one party has controlled both houses. (There's no seperate vote for Prime Minister, incidentally; the leader of the party with a majority in the House becomes the Prime Minister.) Despite the neck-and-neck polling before the day, in the only poll that really counts John Howard led by over 5 points, with a final result of 52.61% for the Coalition** against 47.39% for Labour, after votes for the various pathetic losers are distributed. So if you're seeing a tight race, with Bush ahead by perhaps two points and the Electoral College uncertain, you might be in for a pleasant*** surprise, with a 53-46 win for Bush and a solid 320 in the Electoral College. Or I could be blowing smoke, of course. America is, where it counts, the biggest country in the world. By far. I mean, there's America, and then there's all of Europe put together, and then there's China, and India and Japan... So the characters of the American elections are larger than life, or have become so through the eyes of the media. There's George Bush, who has either freed fifty million people from death, torture and despair, or who has plunged the world into a war which can never be won and should never have been fought. There's John Kerry, who is either a traitor and self-confessed war-criminal who never made a decision based on anything other than what is best for John Kerry, or the only hope for achieving peace and restoring America's standing in the eyes of the world. You know how I feel - rather closer to the former in each case than the latter - but the yawning chasm between how many on each side view their respective candidates gives an air of unreality to the whole event. We had our bit of drama back in 1975, when the Governor-General, John Kerr, sacked the Prime Minister of the day, Gough Whitlam. But that happened, and a new government was formed, and we got on with things as Aussies tend to do: The most recent election lasted six weeks from the start of campaigning to the acceptance speech.**** And so, soon, very soon unless it's close enough that the left can unleash their Dark Army (that is, lawyers), we'll know who will be president for the next four years. If it's George W. Bush, well and good. The War on Terror will continue, hopefully with less of the fits-and-starts we've seen in Iraq, while we in the saner parts of the blogosphere can turn our attention - at least partly - to the domestic front; to more frivolous issues like anime and computer games; to serious long-term stuff like the continuing decay of Europe and the deadly hold that Post-Modernism still has on our universities. And we'll delight in the gibbering and shrieking arising from the encampments of the demoralised Left. If it's John Kerry, not so good. If he is elected clearly and cleanly, then America will survive, but I certainly do not trust him to address the critical issues of Islamofascism and Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions. With four years of Kerry, and a gloating Left and a mainstream media vindicated in its bias, we'll really have our work cut out for us. It's will be about education, countering disinformation, and watching for trouble we don't trust the government to see. Far worse if the election becomes one huge legal battle, but America survived the Civil War and will survive this too. Still, suing your way to the presidency is an attack on the electoral process itself and a massive disenfranchisement of the people, and it isn't something anyone should want to see. Even if Kerry wins this way, he will have established a precedent that very likely will ultimately destroy him. But my girl Trixie says that it will be Bush, and if you can't trust your own twice-unborn grand-daughter, who can you trust? And my feeble attempts and number-crunching tell me the same. So does the blatant desperation in the Kerry camp, and so does the smart money. And however it turns out, one thing is certain: MuNu/Blogosphere: Four more years! * For those new tho Australian politics, the Liberals are the conservative party down here.** The Liberals are in a long-term coalition with the National Party, formerly the National Country Party, formerly (I think) the Country Party. The leader of the National Party becomes Deputy Prime Minister under the terms of the coalition.
*** Or, if you are a Kerry supporter (in which case you have come to the wrong blog), unpleasant.
**** Albeit the senate results took another couple of weeks to nail down due to the insanely complicated redistributions of preferences and quotas that are required. Our system allows a party with less than 1% of the vote in a given state to win a seat in the senate by the distribution of preferences through several levels of indirection. Take a look at this page and complain to me about two-party systems.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:18 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
New Day, New Server
MuNu moved to a new server today, which was as much fun as you could expect from moving a hundred web sites and all their attached files and databases and software. It all seems to be fairly happy on the new server, at least, and we have twice the power of the old server which makes it nice and responsive. Of course, my internet connection is being kind of sucky just now, but I could feel the speed on the forums earlier.
top, the little Unix utility which shows you what's running on your system (it gets that name because it shows the top n programs by the amount of CPU they're eating up) is kind of amusing on this machine. Because it's a dual hyper-threading-enabled Xeon system, it shows up as four CPUs, and top adds up the percentage figures for each CPU, so right now it's telling me that the system is 367% idle. I know that feeling! Oh, and we've gone through five gigs of bandwidth already. Pretty busy for a Sunday.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:23 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 29, 2004
More Smart Money
The Aussie punters (and the bookies) had the Australian election picked, so let's hope they're on form again:
Big Aussie bets on Bush: Centrebet WHEN it comes to punting on the United States election, the big money in Australia is on George W. Bush. Online bookmaker Centrebet said after its $1.9 million turnover on the Australian election, mainly local punters had now broken through the $500,000 barrier on the November 2 US poll. The biggest bets so far had come from Australian punters, Centrebet said, with two of $50,000 and another of $30,000 – all on Mr Bush. Mr Bush was at $1.45 and Democrat challenger John Kerry $2.50, the bookie said today. Centrebet said unlike most elections it was finding the US poll hard to predict because little money was being wagered by Americans, who were not familiar with the online agency.The spread in Australia was much wider, at $1.16 for Howard and $4.50 for Latham, but I'll still read this as a good sign. (Hat tip to commenter JPB over at, uh, yes, Tim Blair)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:16 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
That New Economy Again
The Palm Software Store is having a 25% off sale (which has the nice effect of turning US-dollar prices into Aussie dollars) so I hopped over there this morning and bought most of the software I been trialling, including Facer Launcher (an applications manager), Palmary Clock (a, well, a clock, but it does everything you could imagine needing from a clock, like multiple alarms at different times on different days with different sounds, so you can play Reveille at 7 on Monday morning but have a gentle pip-pip-pip at 8:30 on Saturday, plus sunrise and sunset times, phases of the moon, and so on), Pocket Tunes Deluxe (a good, if not especially remarkable, MP3 player), Warfare Incorporated (which is Command & Conquer for your PDA - or, if you have a long memory, Dune 2) and of course PDAmill's indispensible Snails (wherein two opposing snail armies reduce each other to escargot using everything from handguns to nuclear missiles).
Eh. Anyway, in return for my $130, I got a bunch of emails and some links where I could download the full working versions. Total human inolvement (apart from me, the customer): ZeroTotal environmental impact: Well, I leave my computer on all day anyway, so: Zero.
Total irreplaceable resources used: Zero. And yet I have a collection of wonderful new tools and toys, and a bunch of small companies in America and Europe have my money. I'm happy, they're happy, and all that happened is some photons went from Australia to America, and some other photons came back the other way. Economic magic.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:21 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Lefty Morons: Barking Mad, Want Sedation
Via Tim Blair, this piece from the New York Times of the Southern Hemisphere:
Trailer trash: fightin' mad, want Dubya One particularly overlooked group will keep the White House Republican next week, writes Peter Hartcher. On the face of it, it seems ridiculous that George Bush should have any chance of re-election next week. He is the first president to oversee a net loss of jobs in the US economy since the Great Depression. He has led his country into the most controversial war since Vietnam.It does get rather better from there, fortunately, with a decent explanation of the Jacksonian tradition. But the sub-editor who wrote that headline either (a) has a very fine-honed sense of irony or (b) is a complete idiot. And I know where my money would be. Update: Again via Tim Blair, Evilpundit shows us that while the sub-editors at the SMH might simply be idiots, the cartoonists are actively insane.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 28, 2004
Imagine All The Time You'd Save...
With the American election cycle now nearing the end of its fourth year, it's worth taking a look at how one other country* handles this sort of thing:
PM set to announce electionI repeat: Six weeks would be a longer-than-usual campaign and it would be the first time since 1984 that a federal campaign would run for that long. * Cough cough.
Sunday, August 29, 2004. 12:05pm (AEST) Prime Minister John Howard has left Government House after discussing the date for the federal election with the Governor-General, Michael Jeffery. The election is likely to be held on Saturday October 9, six weeks from yesterday. Mr Howard will hold a press conference at 1:00pm (AEST) and Labor leader Mark Latham will respond soon after that. Six weeks would be a longer-than-usual campaign and it would be the first time since 1984 that a federal campaign would run for that long. The election is likely to be fought on the domestic front - families, the economy, health, education, environment and truth in government. But Australia's role in Iraq will also be a major issue. The Labor Party needs to win eight seats from the Coalition for the Howard Government to lose its majority. It will be a tightly fought election, with recent opinion poll results showing little difference between the major parties.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:13 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Fish Have Spoken
The distribution of votes for the Fishing Party in Queensland has handed a fouth Senate seat in that state to the National Party, who together with the Liberal Party* form the Coalition, which is John Howard's party, i.e. the good guys.
You've got to love Australian politics. * Which is, of course, the conservative party in Australia.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:21 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 26, 2004
Aaaand... I'm Back
Miss me? Wondering where I've been?
Well, let's see: Picked up some nasty tummy bug the same day our internet connection went out at work and didn't get properly fixed until 8pm (not good when you're setting up to become an ISP, even a virtual one). Went down to Melbourne to visit my nephews, where after a week of mid-Summer weather in Sydney (highs apparently over 40 degrees in some areas) I discovered that warm weather here does not necessarily translate to warm weather there. Survived on toast and vegemite for four days, after which the tummy bug surrendered unconditionally. Bought a bunch of comic books. And some roast chestnuts, which I hadn't had before. Strange things. Came home. Read said comic books (including vol. II of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which frankly, I don't think is really all that special). Rebuilt my Linux box (finally) which, despite requiring me to update 405 packages, went completely smoothly. Linux box now has everything RAID-5 or RAID-1 again, with two independent RAID-5 arrays, one of them hot-swap (at least in theory), and direct fan cooling for every disk drive. (It also currently has the case open and a 30cm fan pointed at it, as used by the Australian Government.) Bought a Palm Pilot (Tungsten T3; I looked at the reviews of the T5 and decided I liked the T3 better). Nice toy; adequate screen, as opposed to my old Pocket PC, which was definitely inadequate. If you get one, though, you need to be prepared to spend another $50 to $100 to get the software it should come with, as the software it does come with is crap. It works, it just doesn't actually do anything. Kind of like MS-DOS, which never crashed because there wasn't anything there to crash. Discovered that without a memory card the Palm is largely retarded; you can't even put an MP3 on it. In fact, its handling of files is retarded; it wouldn't know what a file was if one bit it. So: ordered a 1GB SD card online. They're cheaper than you think. Went to Animania on Saturday. I thoroughly enjoyed it last year, when it was held at UNSW, my alma mater if old undergrads can use the term. This year it was at the Sydney Town Hall which despite boasting an impressive pipe organ didn't seem as good a venue. More central, at least, since it has its own railway station. Unfortunately, I sat right up front near the stage for the cosplay competition. Why unfortunately? Because they had this sort of catwalk thing this year, and all the contestants spent their time out on the catwalk, either facing directly away from me or with the host blocking my view. The judges for the event were on the opposite side of the catwalk, so I guess that made sense, but it didn't make for good pictures. Also, the shutter lag on my Sony P85 is a killer for action shots, unless you like looking at girls' bums. Which I do, but seeing their faces once in a while is nice too. Got my 1GB SD card, and immediately filled it with music. Couldn't find my albums by thingy, whatsername, they're not there! Maybe I never ripped them to MP3s? Oh, Deborah Conway, that's who, maybe if I look under D?* Put those on there too and I have, oh, 11MB left. Battery life, like the screen, is adequate; it doesn't go flat in a typical day's use as an MP3 player and a Game Boy substitute while I'm on the train. (Who buys these things to take notes?) I found one of the Seven Magical Fish of Isola, too, but then the invisible Zinger got me. Deleted a thousand spam comments from all across MuNu. And then a yacht ran into the Opera House. As Simon knows, I work only a couple of blocks away from there, and there were ambulances and fire engines running about like ants when someone's kicked their nest over. And then the main entrance to Wynyard Station was closed for some reason, so I had to go round the corner, up one block, and in the top entrance on Clarence Street along with 97 million** other people and one of the escalators was closed and the other one was turned off. And now I'm home. And you? How have you been? * Yes, D. Yeah, I know. Shut up.** Approximately.
Posted by: Froggy at 09:23 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 14, 2004
Coming Out Of The Woodwork
Richard Dawkins is a moonbat of the first order. And the editors of the Guardian are insane.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:11 AM | Comments (26) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 12, 2004
The Downside of Living Downunder
Team America doesn't open here until December 2. The Incredibles December 26. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow not until February 3.
Bastards.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:57 PM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Meltdown Watch
From today's The Age:
Labor has not had the moral imagination to respond to the conservatives' radical agenda.The conservatives' radical agenda? Well, in this day when the radicals have become reactionary, that's might not be as silly as it sounds. The article is the usual pathetic whining of the losing left - the author "lectures in sociology at the University of Melbourne", which should tell you all you need to know. This item from the same paper, titled "Face it: Latham has failed", is rather more in touch with reality.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:58 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
The Meltdown Continues
This from the official blog of the Australian Greens:
Right back atcha, guys!
Morons
Submitted by Virginia. on 11-10-2004 10:42 PM, in the category
Apologies for the fact that idiots exist. Obviously the re-election of the Liberal Party has given some of our redneck pals the guts to come out of the woodwork. Apologies to people who attempted to read and/or post to the comments section of the blog today, and found themselves redirected to boring (and badly-designed) right-wingery. As I'm sure you know, a redirect script is a terribly impressive and complicated thing to program, and makes you look really cool. Anyway, comments are off until I can put aside my election hangover for long enough to deal with the minor problem it presents - I guess this is just practice for life under our newly-minted undemocratic democracy.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:33 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 11, 2004
The Meltdown Begins
One of the things I've most been looking forward to once the elections are over and Howard and Bush have been returned to office with increased majorities is the complete screaming meltdown of the left.
Still three weeks to go for the American and global meltdown, but here in Australia it is already under way. WhackingDay has the goods.Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:29 PM | Comments (15) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 09, 2004
Darn Internet
With 8.35% of the primary vote and 4.39% of the two-party preferred vote counted, the Australian Electoral Commission is calling 6 seats for Labor, 14 for Liberal, 5 for National (so 19 for Howard's Coalition) and 2 Independent.
There was a strong early swing against Labor due to the forestry workers in Tasmania, and it looks like the Coalition has picked up one, possibly two seats there. 7:15PM: Click! 9.34% primary, 4.81% preferred counted. Labor 8Liberal 18
National 7
Independent 2 7:20 PM: Click! 11.98% primary, 5.96% preferred counted Labor 12
Liberal 24
National 9
Independent 2 So that's 33 for Howard, 12 for Latham. Well, early days, early days. 7:25 PM My DNS server isn't responding. Wah? 7:30 PM 19.10% primary, 9.49% preferred vote counted. Labor 30
Liberal 40
National 12
Independent 3 They've taken one of the Tassie seats off the Libs and put it back in "doubtful", though. 7:33 PM And remember, it's not just Australia that's voting today. Afghanistan is going to the polls too. Thanks to, well, you know. 7:35 PM 20.37% of the primary and 10.39% of two-party-preffered votes counted. Labor 32
Liberal 43
National 12
Independent 2 And remember, the Liberals and the Nationals are in coalition, so it's 55 for Howard and 32 for Latham. 7:40 PM How do they count these things so fast? It's not like they're particularly simple, and they're not computer-based or punched cards. Anyway: 26.57% of the primary and 14.44% of the preferred vote has been counted. Labor 40
Liberal 49
National 12
Independent 3 7:45 PM 28.67% of the primary and 15.65% of the preferred vote counted. Labor 41
Liberal 50
National 12
Independent 3 The Coalition has 62 of the 76 seats it needs for a victory, and there are still 44 seats in question. I think it's a pretty safe call for a fourth term for John Howard. But I'll be back in five minutes anyway. 7:50 PM 31.83% primary and 18.47% preferred counted. Labor 40 (yep, they went backwards)
Liberal 54
National 12
Independent 3 Looks like a national swing of around 2% to the Coalition, so they will likely be returned with an increased majority. 7:55 PM Not only have I lost the CD cases for my original Sims collection - which have the license keys on them - but I've lost the file I created that I put all my license keys in. Poot. Oh, no change on the election in the last five minutes. 8:10 PM Not much movement now, as the marginal seats won't be called for one side or the other until a lot more votes have been counted. Labor has picked up 1, with 38 remaining undecided. However, the Coalition need only 9 of those 38 to win, whereas Labor would need 34. I'm seeing the Coalition picking up an extra 5, maybe 7, seats compared to last time. (And they already had an 81-65 majority.) 8:30 PM While we wait for something to happen (like the votes coming in from Western Australia), the ABC is predicting 85 seats for the Coalition (up 4) and 62 for Labor (down 3). 9:45 PM Mark Latham has conceded. John Howard is once again Prime Minister of Australia.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:10 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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