War has Begun

We relaxed on the library lawn today, enjoying the cooling breeze under a warm Autumn sun as we ate our lunch. Uni was over for most of us for the week, the start of our extended weekend. Class was stimulating and we were discussing the ethical issues concerning selective client representation by lawyers. We were using the case of Swiss banks who held 50-year old Jewish bank accounts from WWII and were refusing to give the money back unless the claimants jumped through some rather impossible hoops.

Meanwhile, literally half a world away, it is well past the witching hour, but the sun will not rise for a few hours. It is 4am, but the children are not asleep. Instead, they are hiding in the darkness, in tattered housing which is about to become even more dilapidated. Parents tremble, children cry. Families shut themselves off from the world, sealing windows, barring doors and clutching paper-thin face masks that they believe will save them from biological and chemical toxins; cowering under paper-thin ceilings that they hope will save them from the bombs. But even the illest-informed of these commoners know what the effect is of bullet through skin. How could they forget? It was only a scant 12 years before, for them. How could anyone forget, even after a life time? They don’t know when it will come, or how it will come, but they know it will come.

We sit in class with a laptop, magically hooked up via a wireless connection to the university network, itself connected to the pulsating mass of cables and transmitters that carry the data of the Internet. In a few minutes, the pulsating mass begins to throb faster and faster as the world anticipates. We load up a news site and find out in our nice air conditioned building, that a man, half a world away again, has declared war on Iraq, shattering decades of UN progress, world cooperation and all the underpinning principles associated with that. For the millions of Iraqi citizens, Bush’s “shock and awe” plan is redundant. They were shocked and awed long ago. But they can’t do a single thing about it.

  1:15pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Current Affairs  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (50)  • 

Cheap Corsair Ram

Plug: There’s some very cheap Corsair RAM selling here (probably of interest to Aussies only). Darn, cheaper than the price I bought at. Tell Chris I sent you and you might even get a meagre discount off the already low prices.

  12:20am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 

Class Photo

Ok, seems like just a regular high school class pho–oh… ooh… Hello!

  12:12am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Miscellaneous  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

This site is rated MA

Apparently, JP Morgan content filters have censored my site. Received this message from a friend: “Got a bit bored at work today, so attempted to view your web site. Guess what? Its banned under the category… ‘SEX content’. hahaha….” Amusing.

  4:35pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Site News  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 

Gulf War 2

It is now the morning of the 17th in America. A declaration of war, without UN sanction, may be just hours away. The inevitable has finally arrived. I hope that the Australian public does not forget this when the next federal election is called, sometime before March 2005.

  10:33pm (GMT +11.00)  •  Current Affairs  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (7)  • 

Bluetooth Mobile Phone Remote

A friend was showing me at uni today how he got some software that allowed his T68i to control iTunes on his Powerbook via Bluetooth. Does anyone know of a similar program for Windows that’ll allow that? I did find this, but there’s got to be something a little more developed than that around.

  4:24pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Computing  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Konfusing

The deficiencies of the English language have long been recognised, and now the EU is doing something about it. :)

European Union Announcement
The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, it was conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a five-year phased plan for what will be known as Euro English (Euro for short).

In the first year, “s” will be used instead of the soft “c”. Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy. Also, the hard “c” will be replaced with “k.” Not only will this klear up konfusion, but typewriters kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced by “f”. This will make words like “fotograf” 20 per sent shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent “e”s in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing”th” by “z” and “W” by “V”. During ze fifz year, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou”, and similar changes vud of kors; be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil b no mor trubls or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech ozer. Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

Thanks Gior. Update from Vic: “that post about spelling is a plagiarism from the Wilson Pudd’nhead Calendar (sp? or some such …) by Mark Twain – give credit where due and all that =P”

  4:12pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)  • 

Whatever happened to E/N?

A recent posting by Spaz to list-en may hold some clues:

I got to thinking about the 2nd layout [Up To Here] had, with the banner of hitler and such. I wondered why I’d made that back then, so I found the old FAQ from the site…

“9. Why the hell do you have Hitler, the KKK, Saddam Hessian, Charles Manson, Stalin, and Arabs in death shrouds walking on the American Flag as your banner?
You have no idea how many idiotic fools there are out there that think we’re using that to say we support all those things. It’s actually quite the opposite, it’s more of a so-called political statement, a wake up call even. A look at brainwashing and what it does to society. Most people look at that banner and the first thing they see is Hitler or the KKK. No one really thinks much of Stalin, the arabs, or Manson. All we’re saying with the banner is that people shouldn’t just hate something blindly, but they should know why they hate those things. Everyone knows the evils of Hitler’s “perfect societal plans” or the KKK’s racist white supremacy. You learn a lot about them in school etc, but unfortunately the same doesn’t go for say, Saddam or Stalin. Saddam’s an asshole and Stalin had more people killed than Hitler ever accomplished. In all respect, it’s not the people or acts there of that we should study, it’s the psychopathic tendencies behind it all that should be considered. We can study Hitler and learn from his evil, but what does that give us? What we should rather be concerned with is the study of human nature and the things that cause individuals to act the way they do. Don’t study individuals, study humans.”

Wow. That sure made a lot of sense -_-. It must have been fun being 15.

Looks like the teens are growing up.

  4:01pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Busy

Uni has been extremely busy as you can observe by the decline in my already low posting frequency. Law’s inundated us with a lot of reading – gotta use all those textbooks I suppose! I got a part time job at Macquarie with the Margin Lending Division. It’s going to be pretty menial stuff, but should help to pay off those bills.

Went white water rafting last weekend. Really, really fun! It was up near Penrith on an artificial river at an Olympic site. Never one to emerge from outings unscathed, I was the first to flip over the edge when the raft decided to do an aquatic version of a wheelie at an inconvenient moment. Luckily, I still had one hand grasping onto the raft’s outer rope, and the other still obstinately clutching my paddle, so I was able to be dragged – spluttering – back on board.

Today is the 17th and is meant to be the final day before the US begins the process of levelling Iraq, with Johnny following, firmly attached to Bush’s backside. Hong Kong (yet again) is the centre of a freakish health scare – this time by a virulent strain of Pneumonia. Australia is steamrolling over all opposition in the World Cup. The state election this weekend will probably see Bob Carr in government (which is a good thing in my opinion). In other news, Bin Laden’s niece is thinking of launching a singing career in the UK.

  3:46pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Trek Convention

Time to start saving! There’s a trek convention in June which is billed to have Burton, Visitor, Keating and Billingsley attending (the latter having cancelled his last scheduled Sydney con appearance). Tickets aren’t cheap, but the attendance list is quite prolific for Down Under. I’m definitely going to book – it will be fascinating to hear from cast members from three different series. And of course to get some autographs while I’m there! Ok, non-trekkies can stop making snide remarks and gibes now.

  12:08am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Star Trek  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (5)  • 

Amusing

Thanks Kev: “American actor’s culture shock in Australia.” SMH Article

  4:54pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Culture  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Sagacious Advice

I got vaccinated for Meningitis C last week. I hate needles, and Dad had great glee at seeing my reaction when he attached a three inch one to the syringe “just to see the look on my face”. He sent me a follow-up e-mail today:

Please note that you are vaccinated only against the C strain of the bacteria. This
accounts for only about 30% of outbreaks. i.e you don’t have immunity against the other 70%.

If there is an outbreak, run.

Gee, thanks Dad.

  12:16am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (10)  • 

Uni

Uni for this year commenced on Monday for me. Law’s a lot different from what I’ve been used to for the last four years. The grad students are all put into one of two grad streams, and our timetable is set for the whole year. As a result, there are about 30 of us that’ll be in the same “class” until the end of this year. There aren’t any lectures, just two hour tutes. It’s almost got a high school feel to it, with compulsory attendance and the highly interactive nature of the academic staff teaching (they keep lobbing questions). I guess the main difference is that the students are all from different backgrounds and of disparate ages.

The course looks interesting, challenging and stimulating, but there’s an absolute shitload of reading to do, and not much of it is very exciting stuff. I’m staring at $700 worth of books bought by the end of this week, and they keep updating new editions for them, so not only have I not been able to get any second-hand books, but there may be a problem offloading these books at session or year’s end. Subjects are Contracts 1, Crim Law 1, LL&S (ethics), Foundations of Law (legal systems) and Public Law. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes! It’s going to be a busy session…

  6:59pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Law  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (17)  • 

The Legend of Kobe Beef

A pretty cool article about Kobe Beef. Is it really from beer-fed, hand-massaged, serenaded cows? I have heard that Argentinian beef is of better quality than the Japanese beef, though.

  6:39pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Food  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Operation KFC

Amusing – US troops are placing chicken coops atop their hummers and using chickens as chemical detectors. And it’s an article from Time, not The Onion.

  10:19pm (GMT +11.00)  •  Science & Technology  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Rogue Trader

Rogue Trader is the book Nick Leeson wrote when he was in jail in Singapore, after having traded the Barings merchant bank into oblivion. Fascinating read, and quite scary too – quite an insight into the crazy world of derivatives traders. Basically, due to gross incompetence of Barings senior management, breakdown of risk management and compliance, and Leeson’s deceit and foolhardiness, Barings ran up a position hundreds of millions of pounds into the red before anyone even noticed it (except Leeson, of course). Leeson, like a desparate gambler tried to double up each time to recoup his losses – but alas, unlike the casino where the odds are always static, Leeson’s gargantuan position in the market meant that his actions in effect also moved the market. He had bought all these futures in an effort to get the market to rise, and when it didn’t, he kept buying more. It didn’t work. This was compounded by the fact that rapidly unwinding such a long position would cause the market to dip and crash – so he was stuck with a lot of futures in a declining market, and having to make huge margin call payments. A very interesting read.

  10:14pm (GMT +11.00)  •  Books  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Spot the Wife

Ok, very non-PC, but thanks to Kev.

  4:03pm (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Can I Speak to John Please?

The guys at the Chaser released John Howard’s phone number. It was a legit number. Johnny obviously was not impressed.

  1:39am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  General Media  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Breakfast

Swanson’s Hungry Man breakfast, the “Breakfast from Hell“. Seriously, those pictures are enough to make me naseous, let alone seeing the meal sitting there in front of me, congealing in its own effluent.

  1:37am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Food  •  Tweet This  •  Comments (2)  • 

Spam Scams

A Czech geriatric was stupid enough to fall for a Nigerian scam. So he went out and shot one.

  3:08am (GMT +11.00) tomorrow  •  Internet  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  •