A Jefferson coffee roaster has launched the Obama Blend – a mix of Indonesian, Kenyan and Hawaiian beans. Longfellows started producing the blend recently after the owner’s son had the idea while standing in the shower. Campos Coffee in Sydney has been producing their own Obama Blend for months – at least since June.
Month: November 2008
Obama Blend
Sudoku takes Singapore mall by storm
Sudoku Championships look suspiciously like giant sudoku. Requires big pen.
On the Religious Right
Frank Schaeffer – son of theologian/evangelist Francis Schaeffer (sometimes regarded as the founder of the Religious Right) – has some interesting thoughts on the movement’s future posted in an article on the Huffington Post today. He has made major moves to distance himself from his father – even converting to the Greek Orthodox church. I read a couple of his novels this year – they’re pretty funny, they deal with some of the frustrations of growing up in the home of a Calvinist Minister – I could relate, but don’t share his sense of disenfranchisement with reformed theology.
“This knowledge signals not just a loss for the Religious right but a resounding and permanent defeat. It also signals (to anyone sane) that even if you except the Religious right’s view that, for instance, all abortion is murder, gay marriage an affront to God’s natural law and so forth, a change of tactics is in order. Obviously no one is getting convinced, but rather the culture is moving in the other direction. In fact the Religious Right has made its case so badly that with friends like these them causes need no enemies.”
Tanner’s hide
Finance and Deregulation Minister Lindsay Tanner is Web 2.0 enabled with a blog over at the SMH. Today’s post is all about the government’s new Web 2.0 based thinking – they’re probably going to use blogs in some upcoming community consultation. Ironic really, given that the same government is advocating restrictions to the internet that would put us on par with China. Perhaps comments they don’t agree with in the consultative process will be blocked? Or the IP address taken down and the perpetraitor (sic) silently removed from their homes and literally excommunicated (possibly a removal of Internet privileges).
“This new mode of production is known in the academic literature as peer production, but is more commonly referred to as Web 2.0. It is a trend that applies to much more than the creation of cultural goods, although these goods, such as the innumerable YouTube video mashups which poke fun at politicians, are acting as the harbingers of change.”
“Peer production empowers every citizen to be creator and critic, as well as consumer, of information. It is a mode of production that is enabled by two key factors. The first is the collapse of cost barriers to producing information – computers are now widely accessible in western society. The second is the removal of logistical and functional barriers to collaboration through new internet based networks.”
“The glue that binds peer production together is the ethic of collaboration it inculcates among groups. People contribute their time to peer production because they find communities with a passion for making their adopted content niche the best it can be.”
“This environment also creates efficiencies by allowing skilled amateurs to allocate their intellectual capital to the content niche about which they are most passionate. This is significant when you consider the quality and value of work done by people for love and not money.”
“These changes are not easy for government to process. Our Westminster bureaucracy has optimised its policy production processes over centuries. Adaptation to the new information environment will be neither quick nor easy.”
“The Australian Government should be leading the way in adapting our old processes of consultation, policy making and regulation to the connected world. Yet we lag behind other nations in both the scale and pace of reform, a situation largely attributable to the culture of secrecy, spin and apathy of the Howard years.”
“I am taking steps to reinvigorate the Commonwealth’s efforts in this area. For example, early in the new year the Government will run a number of trial online consultations using blogs and other Web 2.0 tools”
“Obviously the Internet industry is going to continue to fight this important initiative
but the interests of children must be placed first.”
“The need to prevent access to illegal hard-core material and child pornography must
be placed above the industry’s desire for unfettered access.”
Round of applause
Someone much more technically astute than me designed this cube – that lights up when you get a new email in your gmail account.
CSS and desist
CSS is confusing. I just saw my new design in Internet Explorer 7 for the first time – and it still didn’t work. Oh for a standards compliant Microsoft… oh well, I think I fixed it by essentially ditching the transparency setting for Explorer. Still, my design looks better in Chrome and Firefox. I doubt that will be the tipping point for anyone contemplating switching browsers. Any Explorer readers out there finding this easier to read? Let me know please – older versions than IE7 may still have problems.
Kitty litter
The two headed cat from yesterday’s post died today. I guess the answer to the question of how suitable a two headed cat is as a pet is “not very”. Fun while it lasted though…
Genius
iTunes 8’s genius feature is brilliant. I hearts it, I do. It’s house cleaning time. I picked Yves St Klein’s “Polka” the song from that ad with people throwing stuff in the car from their second story window. And I get the following:
Nothing
0-0
Read this post – free
Mozilla – the development company that brought you such products as Firefox 1, 2 and 3 – has performed an interesting test on content writing for websites . The general rule is that a link should essentially ask to be clicked. Your link should be compelling and descriptive. Basically you shouldn’t ask people to “click here” for more information. Anyway, Mozilla ran a test where their Firefox 3 page would present alternate options in the download button text – “Download now – free” and “Try Firefox 3” and the first option was “significantly” more popular (well a 10.07% conversion rate as opposed to 9.73%). So there you go. Boring reading – but I hope the title was compelling enough to bring you here… and that’s what counts.
Give way to buses
This is the stupidest law in Queensland. I understand that in less civilised countries it’s basically the biggest thing on the road has right of way. But I was driving home tonight and this bus just pulled out of me. I started placidly raising my fist and questioning the ability of the bus driver when my wife gently informed me that you have to give way to buses. Hands up who knew that? It’s a stupid law. Here it is from the Queensland Transport laws of giving way page :
When should I give way to buses?
In built up areas where the speed limit is 70km/h or below you must give way to buses when:
- buses are entering or about to enter traffic
- buses are pulling out from a bus stop, shoulder of the road, or far left side of the road
- the bus displays a GIVE WAY TO BUSES sign and the right direction indicator is operating.
When a bus complies with all the above criteria, then vehicles approaching from behind must give way. It is important to remember that all vehicles, including buses, must indicate for five seconds before moving off.
It’s a dumb law. And there’s no way buses ever indicated for five seconds before moving off – but how can you prove that in the event of an accident? Does anyone time it? Is it registered in the bus’s black box so that in the case of an emergency it can be recovered to tell all… If buses are a protected species there should be something to ensure they don’t take advantage of the system.
He’s not the Messiah, according to the "religious right"
I promise not to dwell on the US election for much longer. I keep finding new and interesting (to me) material as the pundits continue to dissect the results. There's a serious paucity of real political news to report now that the election is done and dusted. We've got two months left of George W Bush – but diplomatic gaff stories (and associated snubbings of antipodan PMs) will only entertain for so long. There is the ongoing selection of Obama's cabinet to occupy interested observers. But when all is said and done, the most interesting thing for political commentators to do is pull apart the reason for Obama's crushing victory – and in some cases the reasons certain areas bucked the trend.
Turkey dies slow death in front of cameras
And birds prepared for Thanksgiving at the same time.
Now I know my ABC
Sesame Street references aside – I happened to catch the end of the Australia v New Zealand test match this morning in the car. The hapless Chris Martin – the cricketer, not the Coldplay singer – is celebrated as one of the worst tail end batsmen ever to grace the game of cricket. Kerry O’Keefe is one of my favourite commentators in any sport, and he came up with this gem when addressing what Martin could do to fix his game:
Martin was clean bowled a ball later. Kerry O’Keefe also has the most annoying laugh on radio – and he often laughs at his own jokes. He’s still the only commentator, in my opinion, who approaches the greatness of Navjot Singh Sidhu – so popular in India his one liners are collated and known as Sidhuisms. One of my favourites was his description of a shot Tendulkar played off his tip toes:
It’s a shame today’s cricket was over so soon – I was looking forward to it occupying my until at least mid afternoon.
November 23, 2008