The Null Device
2003/8/6
A few days ago, a LiveJournal creation code fell into my hands (ta, jwz!); consequently, I now have a LiveJournal. It's probably going to be a bit on the sparse side, as I have this blog for most of my writing, though I may find a use for it.
The most interesting thing about the LiveJournal system is the social-software side of it; the interests/friends thing. It's a pity that one cannot fully participate in that with an external blog. It'd be good if there was an option to make one's journal get its content from an external RSS feed, whilst retaining control over one's profile.
How George W. Bush won the 2004 Presidential Election. The fact that the US is handing over control of its electoral processes to companies connected to the Republican Party and extreme-right-wing organisations, and installing voting machines seemingly designed to facilitate fraud nation-wide would be alarming. Except that such things would never really happen in America, except in the fevered imaginations of delusional Chomskyites. Right? (via FmH)
A righteous take on the John Howard gay marriage thing, from local progressive headkicker and Pythonista Anthony.
So, since "marriage" is only for a man and a woman who want to make babies, is staying childless a reason for the government to break up a marriage? What about people like myself and my partner? We're married, but have no intention of children. Worse yet, with three cats we're actually helping the survival of another species, which must make us some sort of traitor to the women-are-for-making-babies school of thought.
(You can never trust these cat-owner types; they dress funny, read too many books and have unorthodox ideas or lifestyles. I wonder whether keeping cats (or having cat litter/cat food in one's supermarket purchase records) would increase one's score in TIA-style dissident-profiling systems. But I digress.)
He also points out anointed successor Costello's opposition to gay marriage, a bit of a step back from his lofty speechifying about his visions for a tolerant, indeed, liberal, Australia. I wonder whether it has anything to do with him falling out of favour as the next PM (something Nick Economou mentioned on 3RRR recently). Perhaps he was put on notice that if he kept that sort of thing up, the succession would go to Tony Abbott or some similarly staunch hard-liner?
What happened to the Extropians, those space-bound, cryogenics-obsessed children of Ayn Rand and the WELL, after the WIRED Long Boom came crashing down? Well, they've swallowed their anti-statist convictions and mutated into Strangelovian neo-conservative think-tanks, which have the ear of the President and were behind things such as the aborted terrorism futures market. Or so Andrew "blogs are killing Google" Orlowski says anyway.