buggery.org

• Eight things you didn't know about the internet - New Scientist
  What forces are shaping it, how big has it grown, and will it ever evolve a mind of its own? To find out, New Scientist posed eight simple questions.
  (tags: internet ai icann co2-emissions environment climate-change)

• Flickr users make accidental maps - New Scientist
  David Crandall and colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, analysed the data attached to 35 million photographs uploaded to the Flickr website to create accurate global and city maps and identify popular snapping sites.
  (tags: flickr internet geotagging geoweb)

Governments around the world - including Australia’s - are implementing new border protection measures to protect their populations from swine flu.

Here’s my simple recommendation for Australia:

1. Immediately ban all incoming travellers who arrive by air, no matter who they are or where they come from. Planes are notorious incubators of viral respiratory illnesses.

2. The only legal method for entering Australia will thus be by sea, with arrivals in leaky Indonesian fishing boats earning extra points for effort. (Those coming by faster boats will henceforth be referred to as “queue jumpers”.)

3. Obviously, the long sea journey will ensure any arrivals who make it into Australian waters are H1N1 free.

4. Problem solved!

• Super-fast trip to a world full of surprises (Mark Pesce/SMH)
  Now the Government has decided it won the tender for a next-generation broadband network, Australians are wondering what to expect over the next eight years.
  (tags: broadband internet mpesce future)

It’s Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras tonight. I won’t be there this time – I’ll be at Chillout in Daylesford tomorrow instead. Here’s a happy shout-out to all my friends in Sydney. Hope you have a fun, safe and spectacular night. Especially my special friends at Ethel Yarwood Enterprises, who are organising the Surry Hillsong float.

A quick look at the morning news coverage of the event:

• The Sydney Morning Herald has a gallery of Mardi Gras photos from the last 30 years. Can’t help noticing the lack of images from the period 1979–1995, when the Herald’s treatment of the event was far less sympathetic than it is today.
• The Australian has an interactive timeline of Mardi Gras history that is even more surprising given that paper’s historical attitude towards teh gays.
• The SMH has a preview of the event with coverage of Surry Hillsong.
• Former High Court Justice Michael Kirby has an op-ed piece in the Sydney Daily Telegraph about why Mardi Gras is important, even if you find the bare bottoms and breasts a bit much, as Kirby plainly does. The Terror manages to misspell ‘Mardi Gras’ in the headline.
• The Sydney Star Observer has lots of coverage, including an article about the decision by queer arab group Beit el Hob not to participate in protest at the event’s theme (”Nations United”) and the nationalistic overtones that creates.

And a few selections from the blogosphere:

• ‘Therin of Andor’ won’t be going to the parade because he was hit in the head with a dollar coin at a previous event.
• Leigh stark bemoans the fact that Sydney’s public transport system is incapable of handling the Mardi Gras.
• Anthony Bosco has a message to GLBT people: “if you want to be accepted as “normal” - then maybe you should stop acting like a freak.”
• Hiraku asks, given that Australia has such a big gay and lesbian festival, how come we don’t have more out queer celebs?
• In a moving post, Ben Gresham (a survivor of ‘ex-gay therapy’ and a member of the Pentecostal church) explains why he is marching.
• ‘PoisonedHappiness’ is anguishing about having to attend the parade with some straight friends who he doesn’t think will be sympathetic to the event. And they don’t know he’s gay.

CC-licensed image above: ‘Mardi Gras‘ by alexanderino.

The Turd Burglar

Business card of one of our local septic system maintenance chaps. Ho ho homo…

My band has a new album coming out and I just got the cover art!

Yes, it’s a joke. I blame Warlach.

These are the rules if you want to play:

1 - Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

If you’re going to pay good money for advertising space in the Saturday Age, you probably can afford the time to spell-check your ad, especially if the spelling mistake is in the headline, and even more so if you spell the offending word correctly three lines later just to draw attention to your mistake.

Because I’m so slack at updating this blog, I’ve set up a plugin which creates a new post every time I post something to Twitter. A percentage of these will be fluff, so I’ll come back and delete those from time to time.

I’ve also set up somewhere else some software that posts from my Blog to Twitter, so if this causes my Blog to swell up and consume the Internets … sorry.

Follow me on Twitter.

We are quite safe from the current bushfires. Our home is not in one of the areas affected by the big fires which have made worldwide news. The nearest fire to us was 30 or 40 km away and that fire has now been contained.

Naturally we, like all Australians, are shocked and saddened by the events of the last few days. With all the death and destruction, I haven’t been in the mood to write, so sorry to all of you who took this silence as a sign that we might have been affected.

I’m gratified that so many people in such distant places thought of us. If you are able and inclined, you can make a donation to the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal.

Image: Nothing but rubble … more than 500 homes were lost at Kinglake. (ABC/AAP: Andrew Brownbill)

A selection of my Twitter messages about the Victorian bushfires as they unfolded. (more…)

I think I’m starting to get the hang of this living-in-a-bushfire-prone-area thing. In the last week we’ve put the fire plan into action three times - that means preparing to defend the house against a fire reported in the area. The latest of these is currently burning 2 kilometres away, and as I write this the house is locked up, the hoses are at the ready, the gutters are blocked up and full of water, and I’m watching the planes and helicopters buzzing back and forth as the CFA deals with the fire.

All of this is happening in utterly dreadful weather - it’s 45ºC outside, there’s a vile wind blowing, and the air smells of smoke.

While all of that is hard, I think the hardest part is the constant apprehension of impending disaster. Even when there’s no fire reported in the area, on days like this you find yourself sniffing the air for smoke, watching the skies, listening to the radio, and always expecting that something bad is about to happen.

Today is the 29th of January, and so far this year we have had not one drop of rain, and there is no prospect of rain in the next week, probably more. I do not remember ever in my life going through a whole month – any month of the year – without any rain at all. According to the Bureau of Meteorology, the last time there was no rain in January in this part of the world was 1930. We depend on rainfall in this house because the only water we have – for drinking, cooking, showering and gardening – comes from rainfall harvesting. We’re doing OK for water at the moment but it won’t last forever without some rain.

Honestly I wonder where this all will end.

This image provided by GeoEye Satellite Image shows Washington D.C.’s National Mall and the United States Capitol, far right, Washington D.C. on Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 taken at 11:19AM EDT during the inauguration of President Barack Obama. The image, taken through high, whispy white clouds, shows the masses of people between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial. (AP Photo/GeoEye Satellite Image)

America’s new president is a non-gay man, just like all those before him. What a nation of homophobes!

Seriously, the new Pres has a pretty good set of objectives for the GLBT people who voted for him — check em out.

• Epic Fail: Efforts to Fight Invasive Species Could Cause 'Ecosystem Meltdown'
  Efforts to reverse the proliferation of invasive species on Macquarie Island, a 50-square mile piece of land located approximately halfway between Australia and Antarctica, have taken a disastrous turn for the worse–with the likely end scenario a complete "ecosystem meltdown." (TreeHugger)
  (tags: green antarctic maquarie-island ecosystems rats rabbits invasive-species aat australia)

Above: A White House staffer carries a framed photograph of US President George W. Bush outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 13, 2009, one week before Barack Obama is sworn in as president. (SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

The long nightmare is almost over. Hope is the prevailing mood in America and around the world. Change is coming. Four, or eight, years from now, will we recognise the world as it was in 2008? I hope not.

Eight years ago…

• Why Bush Should Win (Buggery.org, 11 Dec 2000)
• American Dumbocracy (Buggery.org, 15 Dec 2000)

Four years ago…

• Sheesh! Can’t you freaking yankees get anything right? (Buggery.org, 3 Nov 2004)

Will we miss Bush when he isn’t available to poke fun of any more?

Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn’t seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.