Hogshead: (from the OED) 1) 300L oak barrel; 2) applied allusively to a person viz "his jabberment in Law, the flashiest and the fustiest that ever corrupted in such an unswill'd hogshead" (Milton)
Chins has a BA (Philosophy, Politics and Sociology, and English Literature), a DipEd, an MEd, a DipTradeStudies, and is at present studying a BAppSc in Wine Science. He has been a cleaner, a clerk, a bartender, an electrician and a teacher; currently he is a winemaker in the SW of WA where he lives with his wife and 2 kids.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003 ABC Funding
I notice that the ABC has decided to axe the popular children's news digest Behind the News. This is a crying shame. As one teacher pointed out on this morning's Radio National's Media Report, most children, and adults for that matter, read visual texts much more often than they read written texts. Therefore, teaching literacy means more about teaching kids how to unpack and understand visual texts than it is about doing the same for written texts. BTN taught kids, alongside digesting the news into a kid friendly form, how to read the news - and therefore formed an important part of teaching literacy in their image dominated world.
That they consider axing such an important show points to how the current funding of the ABC is just a nonsense. We need to find new (or old) ways of generating revenue such that the ABC doesn't have to cut into the important shows because the government of the day chooses not to increase funding. I say we go back to tv licences. Licences could be subject to means testing so that the poor aren't cross-subsidizing the rich. That way the auntie won't have to spend so much time counting beans and pleasing her political masters. She can then concentrate on the important outcomes of quality production values and informing the public.
Thursday, July 31, 2003 The Bunyip Doesn't Like Universities or the ABC
I have long been a lurker on Professor Bunyip's Blog and enjoy reading his clever wordsmithing. Often I don't agree with all he has to say, but as an advocate for populist lefty bashing and pseudo-anti-intellectualism (like his friend Andrew Bolt) he taps into a particular part of the Australian psyche that is alive and well.
Recently he was bashing universities and offered this:
As one of the irrelevantly credentialled graduates he speaks of (my degree in literature and philosophy serve no useful purpose, I assure you) I was set to thinking about just what was the purpose of universities. The Liberal party offers us this:
Inspiring stuff, indeed, Mr Bunyip. Is there anything in that you can actualy disagree with? Do you believe that higher education does not aim for such outcomes, or that these outcomes are unworthy of pursuit? If you go through university and don't change as part of the process, then that process has not been successful. And if you have been through that process then you will undoubtedly understand the value of it.
As taxpayers we should be looking at the value universities have in creating a better world. They do this in precisely the ways mentioned in the Liberal manifesto above. Just as I agree that free universal healthcare is a goal we should be striving for, so I believe that free universal education should be aimed at. Maybe both are not entirely achieveable, but both should be aimed at anyway.
And as for the ABC. Mr Bunyip, for someone who purports to find the ABC so biased, why the heck do you seem to spend so much time watching it? I suspect it is because that despite the perceived bias there is also a factor called quality that cannot be found in anywhere near the same quantities as on the commercials. Surely, Sir Bunyip, you don't want the ABC to become like those others?
Is anyone else utterly sick and tired of the spin and obfuscation these politicians deliver to us via the press? On the one hand we have the US government issuing travel warnings for yanks travelling in Australia, and on the other hand we have this:
The Australian Attorney-General's office said yesterday that the memo was wrong and that a revised memo would be issued.
But in Washington, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, has told the ABC that it stands by the original memo and it is inaccurate to say a revised one will be put out.
Should we believe the world leaders or our own?
Dear Joe. Maybe we weren't as big a terrorist target when you guys came into office, but we sure as hell are a lot bigger target now that we're Bushies little lapdogs when it comes to getting rid of that axis of evil.
(Insert picture of Homer slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand whilst murmuring loudly, Der)
The Pentagon set this up! Think about it. These are the people that are running the free world. Has everyone gone crazy? What sort of madness is this? What sort of moral vacuum are they living in? To promote betting about when the next terrorist attack will be! Aaagghhhh. And as for you people who voted John Winston in last time, are you going to do it again, are you going to give him the opportunity of sending more of our sons and daughters into strange countries to kill and be killed, at the behest of the same madmen that would seek to set up an internet site where people can bet on the next 9-11?
We have only one chance left. You must promise me that you'll never, ever intoduce a GST...whoops. Another blatent lie I can't let go of. You must promise me that you think your children are more important than anything and therefore you will not vote for any yankee arse licking, lying, SOB who will undoubtedly go in to bat for el prezo shrubbo every time he needs to solve his own country's oil problems.
Goodness gracious - why would anyone want to have more than one wife in the first place? But such outrageous statements by the powers that be of the church show quite plainly that it is the church itself out of touch with both Christ's teachings and public mores.
To the pointy nosed rednecks of the church who don't think homosexual love is acceptable I say this. Courtesy of Bob:
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.
I am no believer. In fact, thank god I'm an athiest! But when the church uses sexual identity as a reason to separate those that it will accept over those that it will not I have to shake my head in bewilderment. Surely christianity, if nothing else, is about universal love and therefore universal acceptance.
And besides, the dumb bozos who keep quoting the bible as reason for the exclusion of homosexuals HAVE GOT IT WRONG. They just haven't been reading the bible in the correct fashion. A wonderful account about the bible and its attitude to homosexual love can be read here
BTW, I have never met a homosexual (but I've slept with a guy who has) :-)
Peace
esp. to those Christian homosexuals who must really be feeling on the outer.
For the first time since he was elected, the man of steel is pursuing an issue I believe in and will back him to the hilt (if he'll allow me!).
Mr Howard's decision to call the six-month inquiry comes after months of intense lobbying by fathers' rights groups, including weekly pressure from his own backbench. Under the proposal put forward for consideration, known as "rebuttable joint custody", the Family Court would be asked to start with the presumption that a child would spend equal time with both parents. The onus would be on one parent to prove the other was unfit to share custody because of reasons such as violence, alcohol or drug use, inappropriate behaviour or other factors.
I was talking this over with my first lady last night and she is an even more bleeding heart liberal lefty than I am and she thinks it's long overdue. There are a lot of deeply hurt men out there that go to the family court knowing that their chances of having joint custody of the kids are next to nil because of the inherent bias of the system that seems to suggest that women are better equipped to raise the children simply because they are women. This just is not so anymore. Each parent will have different abilities and characteristics that when taken together create a bigger picture of child rearing for the kids than if eitther of them were to do it alone. The kids will be better off, by and large, in most cases (he reiterates so as not to be accused of gross generalisations) when they have equal time with both parents. This is the best starting point. Then the family court can decide upon the evidence what percentage of time each parent should have.
I might even vote for the libs next time! (LOL) (NFW!)
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
Police State Via Labor Cave-in
So it comes to this. Simon says "We better not allow the Libs to use this ASIO powers bill as a DD trigger otherwise they'll call it and then we'll be fighting an election with security at the centre and we'll be seen to be soft on it".
So Labor caves in and agrees to pass the legislation. Never mind that the changes made are purely peripheral. Never mind that the legislation still has very bad consequences for citizens. Says Bob Brown "It doesn't change the fundamental flaw with this legislation which is that it allows totally innocent people .... to be picked up off the street, detained for a week, questioned in blocks of up to eight hours by ASIO acting as a new police force without necessarily having their lawyer there. "It's a very serious erosion of fundamental rights in this country and we shouldn't be entertaining it"
When both major parties agree to legislation that impinges on our rights as free citizens and makes government bureaucracies even more powerful the time comes for all of us to stand up and tell them we are not going to take it any more.
Contact your federal MP right now and let them know this legislation is reprehensible.
Many thanks to mediadragon for this link to an article by Kurt Vonnegut, a writer I have always enjoyed. I reprint in part below some of what the old boy has to say - note how you could replace the US with Oz in the last paragraph without too much difference in meaning. Gotta laugh.
Work persons have been sent home from that site because American “conservatives,” as they call themselves, on Wall Street and at the head of so many of our corporations, have stolen a major fraction of our private savings, have ruined investors and employees by means of fraud and outright piracy.
Shock and awe.
And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice.
Shock and awe.
What are the conservatives doing with all the money and power that used to belong to all of us? They are telling us to be absolutely terrified, and to run around in circles like chickens with their heads cut off. But they will save us. They are making us take off our shoes at airports. Can anybody here think of a more hilarious practical joke than that one?