buggery.org

David Burgess and Will Saunders, the two protesters who painted the words NO WAR on the sails of the Sydney Opera House last year, have been sentenced to nine months periodic detention.

They have also been ordered to pay the Opera House Trust $151,000 to pay for the cleanup, and today they handed over the first $40,000 of that amount.

Burgess and Saunders have set up a fund to raise money to pay the compensation bill. Donations are accepted, or you can purchase greeting cards from the site.

Doug Cameron, the colourful national secretary of the AMWU, at the ALP national conference this morning (via Crikey):

The elite drool from every orifice at the thought of a free trade deal with the US. The Premiers are even worse. I reckon there’s some Pavlovian science going on here.

It’s one of the better lines from Labor’s annual talkfest/scragfight. Julia Gillard was very much in her element waving about a leaked memo sent by the government to the pointy heads at Medicare state offices, warning that if the national health system’s 20th birthday is to be celebrated with a cake, government MPs must not be photographed sticking the knife in:

What this email is telling us, as clearly as any other action by the Howard Government, is Australians know when a conservative politician, when John Howard or Tony Abbott get anywhere near Medicare and they’ve got a knife in their hand, they’ve only got one purpose and that is to destroy Medicare by chopping it up. (ABC News)

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You have just won one million dollars:

1. Who do you call first? If I’ve just won $1,000,000, I’ve probably already used all my lifelines, including phone-a-friend.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself? A cheese sandwich. Or possibly the Temple of Genitals.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else? A round of drinks.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom? Nah, fuck that. I’d keep the lot for myself, probably cash the cheque for small notes and build a money room like Scrooge McDuck. Mwahahahahaha.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how? Drugs. I’d invest the lot in drugs.

fridayfive.org

Parts of buggery.org are now nicely reformated to comply with XHTML 1.0 Transitional. It’s taken a lot of tinkering under the hood to get there, but we’re on the way to becvoming standards compliant.

Don’t believe me? Validate this page.

I’ve been delaying writing this while my head stops spinning after Tuesday’s moment of truth.

The hearing seemed to go well. Of course its always hard to know with these things but that was the general consensus.

I made some notes as we moved though the process. They are pretty sketchy but they might give you a sense of where we’ve been.
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The hearing is behind us. I have a post on that but I’m still fiddling with it. Mardi Gras seems to be just around the corner, requiring the application of some thought to the question “shall we?”. The wedding plans are crystallising — we have a date, a budget (!) and, probably, a venue. The weekend approaches, this week without the usually-obligatory Friday journey to Sydney. Work beckons. There are bills to be paid.

array (”Jeffrey Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards.”,4.5),
“listening” => array (”Tori Amos, to remind me of where I’ve been.”,4),
“watching” => array (”Master and Commander on the big screen, Stand by Me and The Sum of Us on the small.”,4),
“eating” => array (”KFC, twice, in the hope that it would soothe my soul. (It didn’t)>”,0),
“praying” => array (”Closure.”,3)
);
include (’/www/db/hol/etc/consumption.php’);
?>

The Vatican has spoken out against pharmaceutical companies which make huge profits from anti-AIDS drugs, saying that moral reasons mean the companies should offer the drugs at lower prices.

On the other hand, the Vatican also claimed last October that people with HIV should not use condoms “because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass.”

Nothing like a little papist hypocrisy to start the day.

…is dead.

Something from my recently-discovered-favourite-irreverant-yet-insightful-website-of-the-moment (just the domain name antipope.org was enough to get my juices flowing; so it’s refreshing to see the site is more than just a one-liner):

* Angel has joined #Judea<Angel> lo<Zacharias> WTF, argh, who the hell are you?<Angel> Fear not, for thy prayer is heard<Angel> Your wife’s pregnant mate, a son!<Angel> You will call him John<Zacharias> Nice, unusual name :p<Angel> and you shall rejoice<Angel> and he shall never drink any boose<Angel> and he will make the children of Israel turn to god<Zacharias> Yeah right, i should believe this?<Zacharias> I’m an old man, fs, and so is my wife!<Angel> You will believe me because i am Gabriel and i say so!<Angel> You will be dumb until all this is over* Angel sets mode: +m

The IRC Bible (via HogBlog, via The Pagan Prattle).

I passed.