The USS Quad Damage

Driver points to ad campaign for his digitally enhanced road rage

So I’ve had a problem with this ad since it was released. I mean really an ad that basically says, hey if you speed you have a small penis. Firstly I’d like to see some sort of research done proving it. However worse than that the ad introduces to the mainstream a gesture which can be used in any situation to say that any male has a small penis. Really if it was targeted at women it would have been pulled within the first week.

Now imagine this.

An elderly lady passes by her doctors office which a sign saying Free Pap Smear screening, looks at it, says bah and walks off. She sees a couple of teenage boys with their index and middle fingers raised and then they seperate them into the classic english offensive V symbol.

Cut to a young adult woman smoking in a bus shelter. A middle aged man walks past making the same gesture as the woman blows smoke in his direction.

Next scene there’s an overweight woman chowing down on obviously unhealthy and abundant take away food. Think Mc Donalds or similar food. Some athletic man on his daily jog runs past and makes the gesture.

The message?

Look after your health or your a VD carring whore – The Cancer Council

Worse than that there is now a simple gesture you can use to offend any women as they’ll all know what you mean by it.

Obviously the scenes could go in any order. However the point is that if this was ever put on TV it’d be pulled within a week as sexist and extremely offensive. Yet the RTA ad remains which is pretty much the same thing but aimed at young men.

I skimmed over a thread on facebook for some reason about climate change. Anyway it got me thinking about how both sides to the arguement have people, studies and evidence they claim backs their side. The problem, as I see it anyway, for the average person is that we’ve moved into an era where marketing and advertising has warped peoples ability to take at any sort of face value anything said by anyone.

For instance every new dishwashing liquid, powder, powerball, etc,... is a massive break through that will leave your glasses sparkling and have been since the dishwasher was invented. Surely there is some point where dishwashing reagents moved from being unable to completely clean glasses to an a time when they could. Meaning that at some point in the past dishwashing reagent vendors were lying about their products ability and at some point past that (possibly in the future) they were lying about improving their product. This the properties assigned to the product via advertising are not linked to the actual product.

See what has happened is that the marketing of a product isn’t actually linked to the product. Ie; it’s branding. Which appears to be giving products properties not linked to their actual real world properties. In 2003 movie The Corporation, Naomi Klein said “the corporations of the future do not produce products. They produce brand meaning. The dissemination of the idea of themselves is their act of production.”. Which appears atleast to me to mean the same thing.

Now with dishwashing reagents you can test it. Buy the product, test it out, see if it works, if it doesn’t go back to the old. However if your looking at climate change how do you test that as an average citizen? Not only that but how do you test the solutions and know they are the right ones?

The obvious answer is to have someone checking for bullshit. The only problem is that the people who’ve been entrusted to do that in the past, the media, either are incapible of it or just have no interest in it because they’ve become part of the system of branding. See Jon Stewarts crossfire interview. I mean really when was the last time you saw anything that even came close to journalism in any major newspaper or major tv station? If you say Fox news, TT or ACA or anything along those lines hang your head in utter shame.

Sadly considering that dictionary.com defines Journalism as “writing that reflects superficial thought and research, a popular slant, and hurried composition, conceived of as exemplifying topical newspaper or popular magazine writing as distinguished from scholarly writing” I can only guess that society is going to have to come up with some new institution to fill the void abandoned by major media organisations.

Wired has an article which basically says that vinyl is making a come back infering that it may replace CD.

Now I doubt or atleast I hope that vinyl never replaces CDs/DVDs or what ever new technology we use for music in the future. However it does illustrate exactly how horribly the major record labels have managed music and the contempt they’ve treated their paying customers with. In that it is preferable to use an outdated technology, more costly technology because it isn’t open the abuse prepertrated by the major music labels via digital distribution methods in their Loudness War.

I’m not sure what effect the standardisation of normalisation in CD/DVD/MP3 players will have. However I assume it means that we’ll be bombarded with “Digitally remastered HD” CD’s for all those music CD’s we’ve bought in the last 20 years.

At the request of a friend I watched a movie named Zeitgeist, a strange indie movie about a conspiracy theory… or something.

It starts off as a mix between 2001, only without HAL, and Naqoyqatsi, only without the excellent music and visuals. The music in Zeitgeist sounds like something made by a dude who does music for bad porn movies. In his spare time. The visuals look like something done by a Comp Sci. student while learning about computer graphics. For an assignment. Which he did while he was high.

The wierd crap and random chunks of video having explosions goes on for an uncomfortably long time. You feel kind of embarrassed for the filmmakers, a feeling which only grows when you see how self-important the film is attempting to be. Like an old Tool song, they have a comedian making jokes about God or something. Like the Tool song, the comedian is not very funny. At this point I was considering switching the movie off. Then something changed.

There was a voice-over.

Not just any voice-over, but one by a man who completely fit my image of a nutcase. I settled in for a good time. This guy would talk quickly and listlessly, like everything he was saying was completely obvious, and he would not pause for breath. Even though we never see his face, I imagine that he never blinked during the recording. While he was talking, I was engaged. When he wasn’t, I really wanted to switch the damn thing off.

The movie is split into three parts, which, since watching The Prestige recently, I’m going to call “The Pledge”, “The Turn” and “The Prestige”. In actual fact I’m being far too dramatic, and the three parts have nothing to do with one another. You can count them as three separate arguements which do not build upon one another in any significant way. Actually screw that, let’s just go with parts 1, 2, and 3.

Part 1 talks about religion. The nutcase notes the similarities between religions throughout history, and how they are related to the basic astrology / astronomy. Some chunks we all know (The “Son” == The “Sun”, death and rebirth is tied to the seasons, etc.) some chunks made sense when they were mentioned, and some were genuinely interesting. The bible is a pretty interesting story. The problem here is that the nutcase tries to overreach a little here and brings in Krishna as a character similar to Jesus. This is.. err.. bullshit. Part of the problem here is that the same character of Krishna is used in multiple religions, and each has a different back-story (some may have been adapted to be more Jesus-like). However, the claims being made about Krishna are:

• He was born of a virgin “Sevaki”
• Star in the east signalled his coming
• Performed miracles
• Was resurrected

When you google Krishna’s Mother all you find are links to random nutcase website. I’m guessing that even if Krishna was born of a virgin, it musn’t have been that important. Googling for “resurrection” also gets the same kind of nutcase sites. The link is tenuous at best, and the characters of Jesus and Krishna are completely different (Krishna was a complete prick, for example). Other gods he mentioned may have had similarly tenuous links.

Anyhow, I’m willing to accept that aspects of religions may have been intermingled, but a good theory as to what happened here is not explained, merely the similarities. Not much of this matters, however, because his point is pretty simple: There was no Jesus.

Shock.

Part 2 is where things get… nutty. Nutcase puts random clips together and waves his hands around and Hey Presto! the government planned 9/11. The reason I don’t buy this is simple: It’s a conclusion borne of necessity. Nutcase wants to believe it’s true so he can make bold statements in Part 3. It also “fits so well” he doesn’t bother to actually make a strong arguement here. He also makes some nutty points which only weaken what he’s trying to say overall.

For example, he claims that the towers were brought down in a controlled manner through explosives put into the building. The problem with this is that someone needs to put explosives into a building where people are working, possibly having to break down walls so he can get to the load bearing members. Was there a significant amount of work being done on the building (say, “elevator repair”, where the nefarious elevator repairers are actually planting explosives)? It would’ve been too strong a point not to mention, so I guess the explosives must’ve gotten there by magic.

Also, let’s say two guys did this. These guys would likely be building demolition experts as opposed to actors who can pretend they’re elevator repairmen, or people who have a hope of taking over the world. These guys have got to be feeling pretty bad after killing a few thousand people. Where are they? I mean, all you gotta do is find a couple of demo guys who suddenly got a lot richer, or deader, or went to India to find Jesus.

Finally, if whoever did this didn’t care about people dying, why even bother with a controlled explosion? Just let the building fall on it’s own. Hell, even if the buildings don’t fall, it’s still 9/11. You’d still get whatever you wanted out of it. So it’s a dumb theory. There are a bunch of dumb theories in Part 2, all of which aren’t really taken to their conclusion, just noting similarities like all good nutcases.

Part 3 is about economics. It talks about the reserve bank and how it’s evil, and the people who control it are evil. You know how people say “where does that hour go in daylight savings?”. It’s the same kind of thing but with economics. The claims here are bold to the point of scary. The nutcase is free here, hoping to have hooked you with reasonableness from part 1, and having shocked you in part two. I guess this part of the movie really is “the Prestige”, where he freaks the fuck out, and encourages you to freak out as well. The movie then goes on to be self-important again and ends.

I don’t deny that some people with a lot of money are total fuck-tards. However, Bob who works at the reserve bank isn’t in on some conspiracy to take all my money. The movie is all “Conclusion” with little to no “aim”, “method”, or “results”. He convinces you that “they” are trying to keep you down, and continues with “everyone is great” (with the exception of “them”, of course). He sounds like a guy I knew in High school who would make up stories to try and pick up girls. He was a nutcase. You know who else was a nutcase?

Hitler!

Never have I been more embarrassed to be in my age group. On insight tonight, they got a bunch of Gen Yers from Moreton to talk about politics. They were idiotic, didn’t know or care about what they were talking about, and wouldn’t have their minds swayed (or would have their minds swayed but wouldn’t know why). I’ll link the transcript when they have it available. The terrible thing about it really was that neither party’s policies were discussed much at all. I decided I’d look things up on the respective Labor and Liberal websites.

The labor website is nice enough, with the very first thing I see their key selling points. The list here’s pretty much cut-and-paste:

• Education revolution – Presumably more money in schools, TAFE, and Unis. No amount though;
• National plan to fix our hospitals – $2 billion;
• Decisive action on climate change – Ratify Kyoto, set targets, etc.;
• Balance and fairness in the workplace – Remove WorkChoices + AWAs. Add “sequins” for small businesses;
• Maintaining our national security – Phased withdrawal of troops; and
• A strong economy that delivers for working families – Keep surplus, try and improve housing affordability.

The liberal website has a lot of video on it, and a lot of it is pretty irrelevant. I don’t care what other Australians think of Liberal, I want what you’re actually going to do. Eventually I got to a fluffy page which talked more about the past than the future. Unfortunately, I can’t cut-and-paste here:

• ...nfi.

Yeah I really couldn’t actually pick any policies, despite all the shit videos they have flying around, and the stuff Howard puts on that page, there’s no actual things he’s going to do. I think the plan is that they’ll put this stuff on the page later, but it’s not there now.

Now, everyone knows you’re not voting for a party, or a leader. You’re voting for a dude who represents you in federal parliament (lower house), and another dude who represents you in the senate. My federal member is Brendan Nelson for the libs or Victoria Brookman. At first sight, Nelson’s page is a lot more flash, with talk about what his dad said to him when he was a kid.

Nelson is a doctor, which makes him smart, but also a prick. The site also notes that random stuff is being done in Bradfield. The area is a very safe liberal seat (17.6%), and Brendan Nelson (Minister for Defense) has held the seat since ‘96 (when Howard got elected). Bradfield is one of the most affluent electorates in Australia. Basically, the guy reminds me of Matt Damon’s character in The Departed. I’d also like to take this time to say “Matt Damon”.

As a result, the labor candidate for Bradfield is pretty weak. She’s a 22 year old activist doing Psychology. So I’m wondering whether to vote for her considering she’s in a similar position to a certain commissar friend of mine. I’m afraid my vote’s going to waste either way. Clearly having a marginal seat gives you tons of free shit. Bradfield is dumb-arsed for not realising this. The greens member is a software designer (whatever that means). It even has her mobile number. Sweet. I guess I’ll vote for her.

Anyway, coming back to the Australia-wide debate, I have some concerns…

Concerns about Labor:

• Kevin Rudd is a pussy. He should’ve just told the families of the victims of the Bali bombers to go fuck themselves. Killing is wrong, period. That’s why we don’t do it in this country, and that’s why we should fight for it in others. Wanting people to die is vengeance, not justice.
• Kevin Rudd is a pussy. He’s got practically the same line as Howard. If people don’t vote for him, it’s because him and the libs are practically the same.

Concerns about Liberal:

• Howard is a toolbox. Year by year he’s removing money from the state governments. Moving more stuff up the chain to the federal government is retarded, but it’s invariably going to happen if you keep labor in state and libs in federal. I want more money closer to the people. Howard is direct anti-thetic to that.
• Howard is a toolbox. Some of the people in his government are racist, religious nut-jobs. The party is becoming more and more heavy conservative.
• Howard is a toolbox. He’s copped out on a lot of issues, like children overboard.

I should look into the senate some more.

In Rainbows by Radiohead, and now the new NiN album are both going to be sans record label, and available for “whatever you want to pay” on the internet. This means it’s now possible for me to get decent music on the intarwebs and pay what I want for it ($5 if I like the album, $1 if it’s OK, nothing if it’s shit). There are a couple of issues here, though:

1. There’s no centralised way for me to show that I’ve paid for, or downloaded the music. In case I want to download it again somewhere else, or show them that I’m actually playing it. I basically want some sort of audioscrobbler++ interface into the websites that I’m plugging into. I don’t mind the fact that both NiN will have a different place to download this music, but they’ll have no consistency between them. What they need is some sort of musical exchangey protocol which they can talk.
2. There may be no way to get the music before I pay for it. I may (for example) have to download the music for nothing, then listen to it for a bit, then be forced to download it again for the aforementioned $5. Different bands may have a different way to sell you the music (some might demand streaming, some might give you one format or another, some might try and add some features like video and images, who knows). It’d be nice if there was some software to manage that
3. I may download an album without paying for it, and I might forget to pay for it. My current workflow is to download / borrow / copy a friend’s album and listen to it, and if I like it, buy it when I go to JB, but really I’d want something similar to a 30 day trial (except maybe more like 30 listens)—“hey, you’re listening to this album a fair bit, you want to buy it?” Maybe I’d even auto-set it to spend $500 a year on whatever I listen to most (maybe more or less if I don’t listen to much music, or listen to a lot).

Point is, there’s actually a need for some software here. It’s not the record industry, but it’s the internet music industry. I also have some questions:

• Is the amount I’m paying here too cheap? I don’t think so. I’m a bit TA but not that much. The problem with music is that it doesn’t change, and while I wouldn’t call it disposable, you certainly need a lot of it. I would “envision” giving about $500 to the “music industry” (i.e. artists, here, not the record industry) a year, but I’d want about 100 hours of music for it (this isn’t that much, if you think about it).
• Are the goals unrealistic or dodgy or even against the very idea of getting music on the internet?
• Would it be possible for someone to offer this kind of service to an artist without charging them money?

I’ve uploaded some pictures I took from Floriade. Go here to see them. Note that because I’m a “Free” member, they might be gone by the time you read this.

There’s something wrong with people who didn’t think Shaun Micallef’s programs were hilarious par excellence. It boggled my mind how someone who could crystallise comedy with such brilliance could be regarded as anything less than a god amongst men.

I think his shows, including the Micallef Program, and it’s hilarious sequels, the Micallef Pogram, and the Micallef Programme, were all incredible. He’s possibly the first person to use special effects to get such great comedy. Those shows made an hour seem almost disappointingly short. Other shows fared less well, such as Micallef tonight (?) which still had some classic bits, such as the matrix bit and the high horse, but kinda lost me on the interviews (if only he spent time interviewing himself, the show would’ve been much more interesting).

Cutting to the chase, I am really excited about Newstopia...

Unlike the Windows and Mac worlds, we don’t have to worry about features which the “new version” of the OS will contain (which we’d have to pay for, naturally). I just do an apt-get update every now and then and I get a bunch of new features to play with. People like Novell and others in the linux community are working to do cool things with the desktop which would really make life easy. All I gotta do is wait a bit, then do some apt-getting. One of the really cool ideas that are going around is the Big Board. The idea is basically an “internet desktop”. It’s a little like an integrated version of the Google desktop (specifically the sidebar), but with everything working more sweet.

One of the neater things about this is that it’s supposed to tie together apps like IM, social networking… et al. You’re supposed to be logged into everything, and a touch away from being able to post something somewhere internetty.

Speaking of social networking, I have mentioned Fidg’t as an alternative. Unfortunately, after trying it out, it’s a little pre-baked. I even got errors when trying out the web services. Sad, but true. I still hold high hopes for it, but just not yet. In the meantime, there’s Plaxo. It’s like facebook, but it’s got direct plugging into other webby things, like flickr and lastfm. Also, it gives you a consistent address book. Weee!

I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.