Articles in the mainstream media focused on how Gillard used her speech to vent her spleen at Tony Abbott’s expense, labelling the Prime Minister a hypocrite for “supporting” Peter Slipper, the Member for Fisher. In doing they they completely missed the context that the Opposition had recently tried to raise a motion to dismiss Slipper as the Speaker of the House – a particularly douchey move considering that parliament cannot simply vote to dismiss a member. It was a wedge tactic designed to force Gillard to be seen either as supporting Slipper by opposing the motion, or else having to concede that she made a mistake by installing Slipper as the Speaker in the first place by voting with it – ultimately forcing her into a no-win situation.

Hence it was a shocking surprise that the Prime Minister managed to pull a Jesus and the Adulterer on Abbott.

The Opposition has been using destabilising tactics on the already-shaky minority government through their acts of chaos in Parliament, as well as their constant undermining of Gillard’s authority using tactics that amount to “because she’s a woman” and causing the media to incite sexist and misogynistic sentiments from the electorate. At this point some of you are probably thinking “what a load of crap, Australians aren’t that small-minded!”, but as Anne Summers shows in graphic detail in a speech titled Her rights at work: The Political Persecution of Australia’s First Female Prime Minister, the point is undeniably true.

Therefore those who criticise Gillard of using her speech to gloss over the Peter Slipper issue are missing the point. It was calling attention to the dirty tactics that the Opposition use to ensure that this country continues to remain in turmoil. Every make-believe crisis of leadership and claim about a lack of personal integrity that the Liberal Party successfully perpetuates – followed along by their all-too-eager co-conspirators in mainstream media – reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy that our country is in trouble. The government is therefore, constantly on the back foot as it tries to convince its cynical constituents that we are actually in a very good position (which we undeniably are).

The fact that the motion to dismiss the speaker lost by a vote of 69:70 is irrelevant since party members are required to vote with the party, so in a minority government this is an entirely unremarkable result.

Meanwhile, the Coalition have barely updated any of their policies since they lost the 2007 election and continue to campaign on making the other team lose, rather than winning on the merits of their own platform. Truly, if this country (and its politics) has descended into farce, Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party have the most to answer for.

Is it fair to ask a person, or even a significantly large group of people, to change, when what they were doing has been acceptable for decades prior? Supporters of Atheism will likely bring up all kinds of anachronistic behaviours, and social norms of past eras which now seem ludicrous, to justify a general purging of all belief even if they aren’t practiced any more. Granted, situations like the recent riots in response to a sacrilegious Youtube video do little to help, but using this as a argument for banning all religion is like pointing to soccer hooliganism as a reason for banning all sport.

Religion is more than fad or fashion – it is peoples’ way of life, moral compass, worldview and belief system. One could reasonably argue that religious belief is no more or less dangerous than a political ideology. Both have their good and bad – wars have been fought for both causes – so why is one “politically correct” (ba-da-boom) while the other isn’t? It brings to mind the famous Stephen Roberts quote:

“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

… except I contend that we are all religious. I simply believe that an atheist’s “god” is ideological rather than metaphysical. Let’s be clear: I’m not saying an atheist “worships” their ideology as one would a deity, but a rational person must accept the existence of a system greater than themselves, of which they are necessarily a part – whether they choose to accept that or not. I don’t buy existential nihilism, which – to bring this post back around full circle – Nietzsche believed to be a widespread phenomenon of Western culture, and that it was an unsavoury yet inevitable phase that humanity must go through on the path towards transcendence.

In other words, let’s not get too carried away with this current zeitgeist of non-belief – it is just part of humanity’s journey, not the destination.

—-

This post is part of the series An Atheist in God’s Kingdom.

Before I get into the meat of the post (ba-da-boom), it would probably be useful to elaborate on my stance regarding animal cruelty because I can almost feel the heat of indignation caused by my many animal-loving friends. Clearly I am a meat eater, which means I haven’t had an epiphany about the ethics of how my food is sourced. It doesn’t mean I think it’s right that animals should suffer for my sake, just that I have not yet found a compelling reason to weigh my rights vs. responsibilities in that area (read: it’s in the “too-hard basket”).

So getting back to test tube meat, something that occurred to me: assuming it were to take off, and the farming of chickens, pigs, cows and other “meat producing” animals was no longer required – what would happen to those species? As far as I know, these animals are complete domesticated and don’t exist in the wild at all. Does it mean that they’ll effectively become extinct, other than the few that might be kept by zoos and as pets or for personal consumption?

Also on the endangered list would be derivative industries such as “organic” manure, gelatin, leather, and a whole host of other products derived from the meat industry or its by-products.

Food for thought, or thought for food?

—-

Interesting reading:

The Conversation: What is the value of an animal’s life? http://theconversation.edu.au/what-is-the-value-of-an-animals-life-4412

Scientists working on $330,000 test-tube-meat burger http://articles.latimes.com/2012/feb/20/business/la-fi-mo-test-tube-meat-20120220

My dad’s always been a stickler for security: prior to ol’ Johnny Howard’s Gun Buyback Scheme in 1996, he used to own a shotgun for “hunting”. I can’t remember whether he actually ever took it out (for recreational purposes or otherwise), but I do remember the gravity of its presence in the house. My own personal firearms experience is going pistol shooting for a friend’s bucks. I’ve lived with a gun in the house, and I’ve held and fired a gun – so I feel somewhat qualified to speak about it, although any American (and probably no small number of Australians) would laugh in my face for making that claim.

Fear dominates both sides of the debate, whether they care to admit it or not. On one hand, fear drives gun ownership – guns are used for protection, be it from physical injury, or as a “big stick” to enable a person to speak boldly and exercise their personal rights. It’s fitting that the right to bear arms is second to Free Speech in the US Bill of Rights, as human tendencies will typically necessitate the former as a result of the latter.

Guns are as much a symbol of authority as much as they are a tool for violence. Note how despite the highly publicized tragedies that occasionally pepper the news, most Americans live in relative peace and safety with firearms – so long as it remains largely symbolic.

Take the guns away and people live in fear, literally powerless. The population becomes meek and subservient to any kind of power, with rhetoric being the tool of choice. Without force behind it, this is easily ridiculed – I hazard that this might contribute to the explanation of why “tall-poppy syndrome” in so pervasive in Australian culture.

Like how money used to be backed by gold prior to fiat currency, authority in the US is backed by firepower. Until some other form of individual empowerment materialises with sufficient clout to replace the brute force of firearms, I think it will be largely futile to try and annul the Second Amendment – its influence on the psyche of the average American is far too strong.

Alright. Let’s talk about monopolies.

I’ve been thinking at great length about buying an iPad. So much thinking, in fact, that after 3 generations I still haven’t bought one yet. I’ve bought an iPad for each of my three sets of parents but not myself. In theory it should’ve been a no-brainer after Apple released the New iPad with the retina display. After all, that was the one feature I’d been eagerly waiting for. I already own an iPhone and Macbook Air, and spent copious amounts of time and money accruing apps and content through iTunes and the Mac App Store so it’s not like I haven’t already sold my soul to the cult of Jobs.

But therein lies the problem. I feel like I’ve unwittingly invested too heavily into the Apple ecosystem without proper consideration, and I’m wondering whether I’m putting all my eggs into one basket.

Let me back up a bit and explain what I mean by the Apple ecosystem – I’m not just talking about owning a bunch of iDevices. Those are just a variety of different-sized windows into the content world that Apple has built. Media (music, movies, games, etc.) isn’t what it used to be. CDs are likely to be the last of its kind, a brand-agnostic platform that can be played on hardware manufactured by any company (most likely Sony, who we’ll come back to in a bit). Today, when you buy something from iTunes, you’re no longer receiving a physical product, but buying into the company. Sure, progress in the area of digital rights means that you can get a file in a standard format, without restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) schemes so that can be played on devices from other manufacturers, but ultimately if you accidentally lose the file, you’ll go back to Apple – why would you pay for a replacement copy when you’ve essentially purchased a life-long right to it so long as you keep using their system! How is this a bad thing, you say?

It’s that old saying: the medium is the message.

We think we’re buying songs, movies and games, but really, the content itself is free (another topic that I hope to cover in depth in a future post) and the money that you pay goes entirely towards building the ecosystem through which it is distributed. The money that artists and developers receive isn’t payment for their intellectual property – it’s a commission, albeit a fairly large one, for helping Apple to sell their platform.

Taken to its logical conclusion, Apple’s success reduces choice. The bigger they get, the harder it becomes for anybody to compete with them. Like the banks, Apple too will become “too big to fail”.

In all seriousness – and this has nothing to do with my being a member of one of their social media marketing groups – Sony is the only company in the world with interests in the critical parts of the content ecosystem to be able to take Apple on. The reason why they’re struggling is because they haven’t been able to corral their offerings to deliver a consistent customer experience. Both Google and Microsoft lack coverage in the consumer electronics space, and must partner with other companies such as Samsung and Nokia to even be in the game. Likewise for content – merely providing a conduit (marketplace) for content to be sold is nowhere near the same as being able to offer an integrated multi-device platform (both Apple and Sony), or actually owning the content (Sony).

Content is the lifeblood of devices, and with each additional device I buy (i.e. the New iPad), the more I must invest into buying content from Apple to make that purchase worthwhile. I’m not so loaded that I can afford to buy the same content through both iTunes as well as Sony’s ecosystem (in order to be able to watch shows on TV through my PS3). If I buy the iPad, then I’ll be more inclined to also buy an Apple TV so that I can watch iTunes video content on TV.

Hehe… given the above, can you imagine what kind of buyer’s remorse I’ll suffer after buying an iPad? And that’s why I don’t have one yet.

Who wouldn't want such a lovely pair of tits to grace our mall?

Pitt Street Mall is arguably Sydney CBD’s most popular spot for getting together. Yet in spite of the recent penetration of new and exotic foreign brands such as Zara, it still lacks a certain… sex appeal.  To get to the point, what it needs is a defining feature, a landmark like the Maniquin Pis in Brussels, Belgium or the Malls Balls in Rundle Mall, Adelaide, which the people of Sydney can grab a hold of – from ‘bra boys to the blue mountains folk, and to help this great city keep abreast of trends in urban design.

Here’s the idea: Pitt’s Tits - a bronze sculpture featuring two small birds.

You’re probably wondering “why tits?” After all, they’re usually found in the Northern parts, and down here we’re more preoccupied with issues like whether Tasmania should be a bush or not (referring of course, to the very serious issue of deforestation).

But of course, Australia is a former-British colony, thus many self-professed “true blue Aussies” will have parents, grandparents and even great grandparents that miss the beautiful tits of their youth. Not to mention our immigrants – even though they might have come to love Aussie birds, still miss the tits back home.

And then there’s the Strine saying “useless as tits on a bull” – which obviously refers to how useless these birds would be in that situation because they mostly eat caterpillers, seeds and nuts – unlike the parasite eating oxpeckers, which would actually help by eating the fleas and other parasites, which just goes to show, even in language, tits are always on our minds and on the tips of our tongues.

But back to the idea, Wikipedia says that tits “are noisy and social birds” which makes a nice pair all the better as a symbol attracting attention, and even eye-catching, as long as they’re sufficiently large so that it draws your attention to them even in the midst of a crowd.

Despite how great this idea is, I’m sure there will be start opposition from those who would much prefer a local bird, and suggest instead an Abbott’s Booby, native to Christmas Island. However, this country’s already got an abundance of boobies from Abbott, which is why that thought can and should be summarily dismissed.

You’d be a fool to not like this idea.

Last week I posted the list of drafts I’d accumulated all these years and asked you to pick which ones you’d like to see. A couple of you requested “Fuck you, evolution!” which hardly surprising given the provocative title, but going back and reading what I wrote, I remembered why I hadn’t posted it before – it was supposed to be an announcement (about what, precisely, should be clear soon if you haven’t already guessed).

Seeing as it’s been over 6 months since I first started writing this post (I ended up publishing this instead), and who-knows-how-long until it will finally need to be called upon again, I figure I might as well tweak it a bit and publish now, and think of something else clever when the time comes.

—-

If it were left up to nature, I should have died a long time ago:

• I developed an unknown and undiagnosable ailment at a very young age which causes me to cough incessantly. The doctors at the time said that my lung capacity was reduced because of it but I’ve managed to live a completely ordinary life in spite of it – albeit I’m not the fittest nor most athletic person you might know.
• I developed myopia – more commonly known as short-sightedness – at a relatively early age. I spent several years sitting right at the front of the class, not because I was so eager to learn, but so that I could see the blackboard because I didn’t know any better. It wasn’t until my violin teacher, Mr. Russell, noticed that I seemed to be leaning in to the music stand probably more than an ordinary kid should, and mentioned it to my parents, that I finally got glasses. If I was living in the era of the natural jungle rather than the urban jungle, I would’ve been eaten by a wild animal a long time ago.
• More recently, I discovered that I have psoriasis, and on top of that, psoriatic arthritis. My skin does weird things in weird places, and my joints are in constant and incurable pain. I use steroidal creams for the external stuff and take anti-inflammatory drugs for the latter – and will do for the rest of my life. Without them my body will destroy itself.

Yet I have survived long enough to procreate, and with the middle fingers of both hands pointed firmly upwards at the process of natural selection, Jenny and I will hopefully overcome the false starts of last year and conceive soon. Realistically speaking, it is entirely possible that our child will inherit some or all of the traits I described above thanks to genetics, plain and simple. But he or she will grow up in an era where modern medicine will likely render the symptoms irrelevant – even as I use the rudimentary versions of those techniques to make my life tolerably liveable today.

So regardless of the specifics of how we came to be, science has killed evolution dead in its tracks. Survive and adapt to that, muthafuckaaaaaaaaa…

Daggy stock photograph courtesy of a bunch of expiring credits on iStockPhoto that needed spending

Jenny was off sick today, and with nothing better to do she decided to catch up on reading my blog posts. While we were talking about what she thought of the things I’d written, I took a quick inventory and counted no less than 72 draft posts – thoughts that I’ve jotted down here and there as they occur to me, but have yet to find time to mold into coherent forms suitable for publishing. Here they are in reverse chronological order:

The future of retail
Copywrong
A-theist
Poll: what should I study?
The human animal
The future of journalism
Partially formed
Truth vs. Justice
Fuck you, evolution!
Fear of taxes is taxing peoples’ intelligence
Am I a Mac or a PC
Idea: no claim bonus for health insurance
Hatred
Being rich
The hoo-ha over social media
Idea: open source shop
Personal Search Optimisation
Idea: retail
Idea: transforming forms
Idea: kilometre counter
Cheevos!
The Public Spirit
I’m not really here
Government by statistics
The loss of innocence
Review
Accountability on the Internet
Oh no! Won’t somebody save us!
The future is Web? I hope not!
Brand me
A friendly bunch, you lot
Internet predictions
The future is free
Ready to get your game on?
Leaders – the ultimate editors
Why communities?
Ideological veganism
You’re wrong.
Just in time
Social media and the environment
Adam and Eve’s nakedness
Simplicity
Technology and the erosion of society
Beyond reason
Anti-consumerism
One man can’t make a difference
People of the book
Sacrificial giving
Making the impossible possible
Random thoughts about God
The Internet of the future
The world is getting more complicated
Train your brain
Court of law
In search of a passion
Jesus
The morality of atheism
Privilege
Banging our heads against the wall
Superheroes or stuperheroes?
And then what?
Selfish or selfless?
How to write
When it’s too hard
Not knowing
Unfunny
Stupidification
I’m feeling social
Editing vs. writing
Story nouveau
Narrative structures
Integrity of character

What’s interesting about this list is that you can discern from it the various epochs that cyberseraphic has been through – and hence what I was thinking – a lot better than the final list of published posts. From the oldest drafts a few years ago when I was heavily into the mechanism of writing and thoughts about characters and plots occupied my brain, the period where I explored the duality of my Christian and atheist beliefs meant to me, a phase wondering about the implications and impact of technology on society, through to the most recent posts demonstrating a sliver of interest in socio-political matters – there are thousands of words buried behind those titles, many probably past their used-by date.

Any of them in particular pique your interest? I’ll consider giving priority to the ones that get the most response.

• We suffered 2 miscarriages (without intending to trivialise the experience of others who have been through it, neither of ours were the “simple” kind that happens quietly behind closed doors, leaving everybody not in the loop oblivious to what happened. We required surgical intervention both times, meaning time off work.)
• I was made redundant from a job that I’d been in for almost a decade, and spent 3 months unemployed, doing a lot of career-related soul searching
• I was diagnosed with psoriatic arthritis, an ongoing condition related to my psoriasis, which negatively affects my physical abilities

Then there’s Jenny’s mum having open heart surgery, and a host of lesser incidents including one where Jenny learnt a valuable lesson on the very real dangers of -literally- kicking my ass, and a computer hard drive failure that would have been catastrophic but for the fact that most of my data now lives in The Cloud.

We also had some “near misses” such as: the Queensland floods – our investment properties were unaffected, but the flood waters stopped just up the road from where they are located (yeah, such a first world problem, I know).

And it seemed the rest of the world too, was being oppressed. Fortunately, we were very glad to learn that friends and family in Japan and New Zealand were not directly impacted by the earthquakes that rocked those countries, but still saddened by the many lives lost in those tragedies. Then of course there’s the continuing turmoil on the global financial markets.

So bruised and battered, we came into this year with the greatest of hope and expectation that things could only get better. And wow, what a start to the year! We spent a week away with our closest friends in a rented beach house in Anna Bay – the weather was absolutely perfect. Then during the trip I learned that I’d won a Sony Tablet S from the Sony (X) club. And we’re still only in January.

We’ve got big plans in store for this year, including a move (hopefully into a place of our own – fingers crossed).  Hope to share more (and more often) with you right here, so stay tuned!

In the meantime, here are a few photos from the Anna Bay holiday.

"Paradise on Birubi" - the house where we stayed. 5 bedrooms, 2 stories and rooftop access. Asking price: $1.65m

We had a great feast every single night - this one was Praven's superb Lamb curry. Yum!

An unexpected visitor

Leanne, Jenny and Tina playing around in the waves

Who you lookin' at? *grumble grumble*

We saw some spectacular sunsets over the beach

Another amazing sunset. (EDIT: oops, I think this one was sunrise!)

I caught a fish! Well, a Port Jackson shark actually. Oh, and it was actually Juan that did all the hard work, setting up the rod, hooking it, etc. he just kindly let me reel it in. He'd caught one that was even bigger the night before. We threw them both back in, thinking that they were endangered, but turns out they're not. Wouldn't have been all that good eating anyway - we were hoping for Salmon. Juan did catch a decent sized Taylor the night before we left.

I couldn't resist... there were so many kids, and so many toys!

I suppose I couldn't get away with not showing a beach shot from a beach holiday (there's lots, but didn't want to post potentially "unflattering" pics of my friends without their permission). In the foreground is Birubi Beach, walking distance from where we were staying. In the distance is Stockton Beach, where I had my bucks - ah, the memories...

Using the Tablet S
Sony’s device may be the Pope’s choice, but the first thing Jenny said after she picked it up and had a play with it: “It’s not very intuitive”. She too, is an Apple convert – when I upgraded to the iPhone 4, she received my crummy 3G as a hand-me-down. Despite it being excrutiatingly slow, she’s accustomed to the little niceties of the iOS interface and using Android was a stark reminder of the conclusion I came to in the previous part, that refinement trumps innovation.

But I’m not here to review Android – I’m not nearly qualified enough for that (and the imminent release of Ice Cream Sandwich would render any comments irrelevant very soon anyway). As far as the Sony-specific apps are concerned, they’re trivialities for me. Video and Music Unlimited are interesting, but not services I’d use – even less so because the model I tested doesn’t have 3G access (a model that does support it is forthcoming, I’m told). I’m not a big consumer of music and movies, but I imagine that Sony, as a content behemoth as well as an electronics giant, would have pretty good offerings.

The device is also PlayStation Certified, meaning that it can access the PlayStation Store, and play certain games (currently limited to a selection of PS1 titles). The device comes with Pinball Heroes and Crash Bandicoot. It’s difficult to play with the touch controls on the screen, but a recent software update allows a PlayStation controller to be hooked up to the Tablet, which makes the gaming proposition a lot more attractive.

Features
There’s a reason why I’ve left ’til last to mention the features. It’s because They are irrelevant. This was a difficult concept to grasp for an old school computer geek like me, who grew up using Bytes and Hertz as the primary means of comparing systems. But seriously, when was the last time you cared – really cared – about the core specs of your main computer? Let’s be frank here: modern computers are fucking fast. They’re faster than anyone is likely to need any more, and speed is becoming about as relevant to a computing purchase as whether the unit has a floppy disk drive.

The Sony Tablet S has some stuff. It’s stuff that you’ll find in a lot of other current Android-based tablets. Its sole distinguishing feature is the inclusion of an Infrared port that allows you to use the device as a universal remote for all of the components of your home entertainment system (TV, sound system, blu-ray/DVD player, etc.) Admittedly, this is cool, and it’s surprising that Sony is the first to have it.

Conclusion – overall
My time with the Sony Tablet S gave me a good look over the fence – in fact not just a look, but a good decent trample. Having done so, it’s settled in my mind once and for all: the grass definitely isn’t greener on the other side. Looks like I’ll be staying with the dark side for now, but Sony have encouragingly nudged the bar slightly higher for all would-be players. In that they should be commended.