buggery.org

We posted out the invitations for the wedding a week ago tonight. Several people in North America and Europe report that they’ve already received theirs, but other friends in Tighes Hill (less than a mile away) haven’t. Monday was a public holiday here, but that doesn’t explain the phenomenon. Curious.

“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.” So goes an old proverb what I just made up, so what do we say of the man with two computers running five different operating systems?

A week after the iBook came into my iLife, I have few, if any, iComplaints. There is an interesting learning process associated with alternating between the parallel Windows and Macintosh universes. So many things work in different ways — often only small differences, but they sometimes present a challenge.
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Some notes from the weekend’s camping excursion.
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Photos from the weekend camp are online in the gallery. Text to follow tomorrow or thereabouts. Stunning weekend, just perfect.

We’re heading up to the Chichester State Forest area in a wee while for a jolly weekend’s camping with the dogs. So no posts until Monday (unless we find a hotspot, which doesn’t seem very probable in the outback).

Tipping to date: 25/32 (78%). This week’s tips…
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OK. “Wintel Chauvinist” is a bit strong, but I’ve been a Windows user since I stepped up from MS-DOS, and I was dead keen on MS-DOS from the point I grew tired of VMS, and VMS seemed so cool after punched paper tape… but I digress.

I’m writing this post on my brand spanking new Macintosh iBook. It’s only a few hours old, and I can honestly report that typing on this keyboard is, for whatever reason, like wading through a shark-infested lagoon, but generally I’m loving my new toy.

More in due course.

If they can arrest one architect, why not all of them?

(Apologies to 1970s feminists).

Mark Latham’s plans to put the republic back on the agenda are encouraging, sensible and logical:

• If Latham becomes PM later this year, in 2005 we will have a plebiscite on the question “Do you want an Australian Republic?”
  • If that passes (and it certainly will), in 2006 we will have a plebiscite on the proposed model(s) for a Republic;
    • Then in 2007 a final constitutional referendum to adopt or reject the preferred model.

The plan is simple, leaves the voters in charge of the process, has -plenty of time for informed debate and discussion, and proceeds logically from each stage to the one following.
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Next: Republican Party campaign ads from the Madison Avenue offices of Pavlov & Pavlov:

Instead of asking the subject — a Democratic voter — what he thought of the use of Sept. 11 images in the first Bush campaign commercial this year, the researchers noted which parts of his brain were active as he watched — and that they were different from the parts that had lit up in earlier tests with Republican voters.

The researchers don’t claim to have figured out either party’s brain quite yet, since they haven’t finished this pioneering experiment.

But they have already noticed intriguing patterns in the way that Democrats and Republicans look at candidates.

Researchers zeroed in on 9/11 images and their particular effect among Democrats on the amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to threats and danger…

“The first interpretation that occurred to me,” one scientist conducting the test tells the NYT, “is that the Democrats see the 9/11 issue as a good way for Bush to get re-elected, and they experience that as a threat.”

(Drudge)