Is there such a thing? It is arguable that there isn’t. Yet who am I to judge, I am just another crazy West End cyclist. However, a lot of people have been saying that they want to do their bit for the environment by buying a Toyota Prius. I have always thought that hybrid cars are more green-wash than anything else, so I decided to investigate. Before you fork over $37,400 of your hard earned, you should find out the facts.
Last year, at the Students of Sustainability conference, I thought I would push my boundaries a little. Instead of going to a nice, safe, feel good session about sustainability, I went to one entitled: Living cheaply and contributing as little to the capitalist economy as possible. This fantastic little session discussed what most people would consider deviant behaviour – fare evasion, dumpster diving, squatting and shoplifting.
The seminar was divided into two parts, firstly they gave some moral justifications for engaging in such behaviour, followed by instructions on how to do it. I don’t know why they even bothered attempting to provide moral justifications. The best they came up with was that dumpster diving doesn’t really need a moral qualification. I tend to agree. However, this crazy woman, who was talking about shoplifting started ranting on about organic grocers, and how they were exploiting a market niche. Then moving on to the fact that they only really sell to rich middle-class types, and she coined the phrase “exploitative organic grocers!”, which she proceeded to include no less than 5 times throughout the rest of her speech. These exploitative organic grocers she speaks of actually just Joe Average market stall holders down at the Queen Vic.
I walked away shocked. In my book, shoplifting was bad, period. Someone tries to do the right thing by the planet and its people, and all the get is accusations of being exploitative. At an environmental conference no less! Once again, the anarchists prove they have no solutions.
Fast forward 9 months, I was reading Energy Bulletin and it had a link to an article titled “Is Whole Foods Wholesome?“. To save you from having to read it all youself, it is basically critical of the US organic grocery chain called Whole Foods. However, if Whole Foods is exploiting anyone, its their middle-class customers. Nothing shocking there. Down near the bottom of the article, the author claims that Wal-Mart is getting into organic produce. I think we have found the real exploitative organic grocers for the crazy to pick on.
Yesterday was the worst day I have had for a long time. I am feeling the consequences of it today. As previously mentioned, I have started working somewhere 3 days a week as a project manager.
While I have been making some headway, the boss had some bad news. Basically the company had been pushed out of a reasonably large deal. This in itself was not a fatal blow, but what followed was. The first head to roll was the Windows tech, which was completely unrelated. Then the boss told the most senior programmer working under me that he wasn’t fired, but he would be in a few weeks. Add this to the fact the office administrator is leaving next Friday, by my standards, the business is in a bit of a mess.
After Xenon, I never wanted to be responsible for fucking with peoples livelyhood. I still remember the day I had to lay off the remaining staff. Just on four weeks into this job and I am finding myself in a similar position.
It also looks like the software development devision of the company will be closed unless the other full time developer and I agree to take on 2/3 ownership, become directors and support ourselves rather than getting a wage. I don’t know what to do. I only took this job because I didn’t want to have to work for myself. Now it looks like I may have to anyway.
So last night, we had a beer, then went to the pub, had a few beers, went back to the office and had a few more. I’m not really sure how I got home. I think I caught the train. I have packet of cigarettes and a few buts on the ground outside that look like they have only had a few puffs taken out of them. I do remember waking up infront of rage at 3am, still very intoxicated.
I had to go into the office to pick up my bike. The ride home eased the hangover a little. I think I need some more greasy food.
My beautiful girl came home today :))))
I have putting off my election postmortem because, well, it’s all too depressing. It’s fair to say that I put more effort into this election than any other. It would also be fair to say that the effort wasn’t that much, as until now I have done nothing.
On Saturday I was handing out how to vote cards for The Greens at Mt Gravatt and Murrarie. After standing up all day, I got home at about 6:45, did some work, washed my face and checked the election results before heading off to the post election pissup. By this stage, it was already clear that we were probably going to be stuck with Johnny Rotten, Abbott and Costello, and the rest of those stooges for another 3 years.
While the result was good for The Greens (though not as good as they expected), it wasn’t so good for the Country. Elissa managed get almost 5% of the vote in her electorate which made her As the night dragged on, the mood at the party deteriorated somewhat. Comfortably numb from lots of beer, Spikey and I left, got a pizza and went home.
More bad news came on Sunday. It now looks like the conservatives have managed to gain control of the Senate as well. For those of you who are too stupid to work out why this is not so good, digital_wraith has a nice explanation.
So what went wrong? Plenty of things. The most obvious was the “grubby preference deal” between Labor and The Greens. It was only grubby because someone botched the job. As a member of The Greens, I suspect that the problem was more to do with Labor not releasing their Forestry policy in time for The Greens to print their how to vote cards. I know that I was handing out open ticket how to vote cards in Bonner. This could only have lead to less preferences to Labor and an increase in informal votes.
There was also this hope that The Greens would pick up all of the votes that The Democrats had lost. As it turned out, this wasn’t the case. While The Democrats are now in ruins, and they have been accused of not having any policies of their own, the slogan of keeping the bastards honest and agreeing to work with the government of the day made them a major force in Australian politics. I am not suggesting that Drew Hutton or any other Greens candidate wouldn’t do as good or better job as the Democrats sennators they would have replaced. Perhaps the public just wasn’t ready for The Greens to hold the balance of power.
As for Labor, who are you? Who do you represent? Do you represent free market idealism? I thought that was the job of the Liberal Party. You say that you represent the workers, yet you continue to push for higher productivity from these workers in exchange for giving them the privilege of their wages keeping up with inflation. Workers rights and protection of the environment are in direct conflict with the free market and productivity growth. You can’t have it both ways, at least nobody has ever explained to me how this is possible.
While I was handing out how to vote cards, I got involved in a discussion with the Liberal and Labor volunteers. The Liberal was an accountant and financial planer. I’m not sure what the Labor guy did. The subject of Superanuation came up, and they were both agreeing with one another about how great it was, and talking about investment opportunities. This Labor guy was a Liberal wannabe.
I mentioned Foresters ANA and how their ethical super fund had managed to achieve a solid 5% minimum return over the last 12 years without investing in shares or distorting capital markets.. I was promptly told that 5% was pathetic, and that a good fund would have returned around 10% average. Reviewing my super, I would have been very happy with 5% (I got closer to 3%). For every fund that got a very high return, there were just as many that got a low return. I don’t see how it is possible for all funds to get high returns. The losses in one fund makes gains in another. If the aim of superanuation is to ensure that everyone can retire comfortably, surely this has got to be the most costly, inefficient way of doing it.
I could rant all night, but sadly its time for bed.
Web sites that don’t adhere to web standards are really starting to give me the shits. Once upon a time this didn’t really matter as you either used Netscape or IE, and as long as the site work in both browsers, it was OK. Now there are a number of new browsers, most recently Safari created by Apple, that are starting to gain acceptance.
As an Opera user for around 2 years now, I have put up with sites not rendering as they should. Most of the time it isn’t a problem but more and more sites are starting to check what browser I use and and when they see that I am using Opera, they tell me that I have to upgrade to the latest version of IE or Netscape. One site even suggested that I should install Microsoft Windows (I run Debian Linux) so that I could view their crappy little web site. Reality Check. I am the customer, make your web sites work or I will buy elsewhere.
Another web site issue is the fact that a lot of sites don’t work as they should. Today I was looking to rent a 2 tonn truck to help my girlfriend move house on the weekend. I looked at websites for the following companies:
Not one of them could even give me a quote without some error appearing or telling me that I really wanted a Mitsubishi Lancer instead of a truck. Full marks to Network Rentals who would have got my booking if they had a truck available on the weekend. Their site is clean, easy to navigate and can provide you with rates without having to fill in page long form detailing what you ate for breakfast on the 4th of May last year.
Lets move on to ‘web sites” created in flash. I was having a debate with my girlfriend the other day about whether web sites created in flash were actually web sites or just a flash movie siting on the web. Flash can be fun. I have seen a number of really funny flash movies and games. I have even seen a demo where it was intergrated into cold fusion and a sql database as a forms type application (Though there is too much missing from it to make it of any use). But what I really hate is the following:
Thats enough of a rant for today :)
peace out