Category: Politics
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52/30/5 Week 38
The photos for week 38 were taken in central Canberra. View Larger Map I was mainly focusing on public sculpture around the Civic area. A strange bird statue on top of a poster stand: Some grafitti that appears to be taken from *Where the Wild Things Are*: A metal sheep: Another more abstract sculpture: And…
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52/30/5 Week 6
Week 6 takes us to Black Mountain Peninsula. View Larger Map An interesting looking tree: Some benches: Australia’s Parliament House on the other side of the lake: After that we moved on to Mt Ainslie. View Larger Map Canberra Airport, which is quite close to the mountain: And a railing to the lookup at the…
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Hillary versus Obama: The continuing saga
I honestly thought we’d be done by now… Wasn’t [Super Tuesday](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Tuesday) going to be the killer blow for the Democrats? Well, I suppose it’s almost over for the Republicans, although John McCain really could still lose it from here. But [Hillary](http://www.hillaryclinton.com/) versus [Obama](http://www.barackobama.com/), that’s going to be with us for a while. I don’t have…
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Why can’t we all just get along.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the TV and film writers in the US are [on strike](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–08_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike). It’s been about 9 weeks now since they went on strike in November. The economics side of this is the question of ‘why’? The standard theory suggests that you should never see strikes, because the simple threat of one…
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The Coming Storm
[Sometime in the next six months](http://www.exasperatedcalculator.com/archives/2007/01/year-of-the-election/) there will be a Federal election in Australia. Between now and then, expect things to get a little nutty. I’m sure that some might argue that we’re seeing it already: terrorist plots on the Gold Coast, hysteria over changes to industrial relations, pointless name calling over cimate change, and…
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Is the US more sexist or racist
The US presidential nomination season seems to be starting really early this year. Mainly due, of course, to the fact that over half the primaries (by votes) will happen by the first week of February. So far the race on the Democrat side is down to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Neither of them is…
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The best eight word summary of the Iraq war plan
The US [National Security Archive](http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/index.html) (not an official body) has just obtained the [PowerPoint briefing on the Iraq war plan from 2002](http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm). There’s lots of great stuff in this, but I was particularly struck by one sentence from the second slide in the pack >Thinking “outside the box”, but “inside a compartment” When they come…
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What the???!!!
Via [Washington Monthly](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_01/010565.php) is this unbelievably strange [story in the Guardian](http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1990795,00.html): > Britain and France talked about a “union” in the 1950s, even discussing the possibility of the Queen becoming the French head of state, it was reported today. > […] > When Mr Mollet’s request for a union failed, he quickly responded with another…
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Stupid, stupid policy
From [ABC News](http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200701/s1823033.htm) is this brain dead bit of policy: >Australian Young Labor is calling on the ALP to adopt a policy of not taxing people under 18. >Young Labor president Sam Crosby says it is unfair that those aged under 18 have to pay tax even though they cannot vote. OK, let’s ignore the…
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Year of the Election
2007 will be, almost certainly, the year we see the next Federal Election. According to [the timetable published by the AEC](http://aec.gov.au/_content/When/elections/faq_elections.htm) the election has to occur between 4 August 2007 and 19 January 2008. A double dissolution can occur any time, but those are the only dates that avoid a half-senate election too, something we…