Politics: Peak Oil makes it to Australian TV

Australia's national broadcaster ABC has produced a 15 minute segment on the show Catalyst about Peak Oil. Finally there is the beginnings of a discussion on this very important issue.

Although they covered the topic in some detail, it was only a 15 minute segment on a channel that is rarely watched by the mainstream public. If only this type of journalism was being done on the big channels. Instead, 60 minutes is covering the latest human interest stories (Not that I mind, it just seems the world has more pressing stories to tell!).

The most compelling fact of this story was the hands-up poll conducted by an Australian Oil man at an Industry conference, who asked the assembly, how many think we've already reached the 'peak'.. 50% or so said yes.. Scary. You'd think those people would have an inside look..

Life: Malaysia calls

My first overseas trip for several years started in KL, Malaysia. Lin and I set off early Sunday after the AFL grand final, which meant no big night.. Not really a bad thing!

Kuala Lumpur is quite a city. Huge, smelly, and full of smog. Great food, great fun, great adventure. I only wish I had more time to explore it all.. I intend to return one day soon.


Highlights - The food..!!!! Well, I love Indian and Chinese, so Malay is a natural fit. I ate all the time, and due to Lin's family being locals, it was all free, all the time! Against our constant urging, the Ng family would not let us buy a single meal.. Luckily, when Collin (Lin's cousin) wasn't looking, I rushed off to pay our final bill!!! So many options - from stuffed tofu to curried fish or beef, chicken rice, steamed boat a plenty... Mmm.. mmm..

Also, we visited a shopping complex devoted entirely to IT hardware and software. I'm talking about a place larger than any shopping centre in Adelaide - 6 levels of laptops, CDS, flash drives and the like.. I was naturally in heaven!!! The price for a notebook is amazing. Compare: a $AU2500 lappy there to an equivalent machine back in Adelaide would be around 4000.. I think I would have to think twice about a local purchase..

KL is a shoppers paradise, no doubt about it. Not that I wanted to go to market after market, but we could have - the exchange rate was very generous as well.

Unfortunately, all that buzz comes at a significant price. the skyline is 'hazed' 24-7, and the air is smelly. Not to mention the traffic, which was, to put it midly, a nightmare! I don't think I ever saw Sydney so bad!!

Overall, I think we will definitely return sooner than later..

Life: Lin's Birthday

Happy Birthday Lin!

I hope you are having a great day. I won't mention how *old* you are.. I know you'd kill me if I did!

I bought some flowers for her, they look like this:

Programming: Coding Is Like Poetry

I've always enjoyed poetry, and as a programmer, I've often noted the similarities between them. Today I noticed an interesting chat on the CodeProject forum about this very thing.

The mental process behind writing poetry and code is the same.
You have to be able to abstract reality into a simple model and be able to transfer that abstraction into concrete code - ie. your natural language or a programming language.

That sums it up nicely. Thanks goes to Rui Sousa for that one.

Normally, I have this discussion when I've had a few pints at the local, so I've wondered if it was just the brew that has me thinking like that. It's good to see some others thinking the same way.

Similarly,

Good code is like good Haiku.
It is concise, descriptive, and elegant.

Good Haiku, like good code is never contrived. It is also minimialsist without compromising its descriptive qualities

using (Haiku)
{
Writing code, like Haiku:
Elegant within confines
That limit and free.
}

Followed up with a nice Haiku from BluePineNeedles!!

I'll have to keep these points in mind for that next time when I'm challenged to a debate!

Tamagotchi Pokies

It seems that South Australia's anti-gambling king has found a new target of his angst. According to this article he has discovered that those kids toys called Tamagotchi have a gambling element within them.

I don't see how playing the pokies at 6 years old is good for a child's development. I for one don't see how it's good for anyone, but then, I don't play and I've never won 'big'..

The cynic in me can't help but wonder who funded this inclusion? Gambling cartels preparing for their future income streams..?

Politics: Birds and Wind Energy

Once again partisan politics rears it's ugly head in Australia. We have a perculiar position right now of a Liberal fedaral government with all (I think) states being Labor. The current issue stems from the Victorian government's desire for a wind farm in Bald Hill, South Gippsland.

Wind farms appear to be the next battleground between the Bracks Government and Canberra, after the federal Environment Minister promised to use his power to stand up for aggrieved rural communities and protect birds from turbines.

It seems the local community are up in arms about it's location and have resorted to the claim of "what about the birds?" to see that it is not built in their back yard.

The reality of bird deaths may be real, but the extent of these deaths, compared to the benefits to the community at large, is negligible. Birds? even the (British) Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have stated that wind farms are a good idea, and that the deaths of birds (which they acknowledge does happen on occasion) is negligible compared to the deaths of birds from other sources.

Millions of birds are eaten by domestic cats each, year, more fly in to houses (windows) or cars to their deaths. Surely a slowly spinning turbine (these things aren't exactly propellers) can easily be avoided by a bird on route.

I think that the federal government should be doing everything it can to reduce our Coal burning requirements, and should forget about politics for the sake of the country. Is it that difficult?

After all, what is more important? Birds in the sky, or clean air in which to breath (for all of us, including the birds!)

Read the article here

Politics: Bogus War On Terror..

If you've spent any time talking politics with me over the last few years, then most of this article, by Michael Meacher will not be 'news' to you. It does however hold some small hope to see it splashed so brazenly over the Guardian's pages, even if it is only 'commentary'.

Meacher pulls no punches, by naming the PNAC, it's geopolitical imperatives, and the fallout resulting from 9/11, a clear and worrying picture emerges.

In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

That's quite a claim, isn't it? And to think the author is no less than a former British MP.. His summary is no less impacting..

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.

Read the full article here.