Vorsprung durch Technik

Letter to The Editor, The Age, July 30th

WHATEVER possessed Starbucks to invest in Australia in the first place? It always smacked to me of arrogance and unfounded confidence in its product, and its demise was only ever going to be a matter of time.

We have an Italian coffee culture here, which is far superior to anything that Americans call coffee. It’s beginning to be proven that Australians prefer it that way. That is a good outcome.

Victoria Moore, Gerangamete

Update: Memo Starbucks: next time try selling ice to Eskimos

Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary, Personal, Tech Australia, coffee, starbucks

An (unpublished) letter to The Age, in response to Mojdeh Abedi of South Yarra:

Universities continue their careful and elaborate denial of social deterioration on campus. Employee Sarah Quek (Letters, The Age, 26/7) claims no backlash or resentment of international students. A representative from the Melbourne University Local Students Service wasn’t also able to comment — since no such service exists.

The groups of students have quite different perspectives, pressures, expectations and needs.  Universities have a direct financial incentive to pander to the profitable group, and regularly do.  Risky offshore deals and ventures, no new books in the library.  Special facilities and staff for internationals, overcrowding in the classroom. Fancy marketing and glossy brochures, higher ratios of students to staff.

Friendliness ends at campus gates

AS AN international student I felt more than welcome when strangers halted to offer me help as soon as they noticed my wandering eyes and heavy Melway. But to my surprise, it was not the same story at the university. Although local students usually say “G’day” with warm smiles, they rarely approach international students, who are mostly far from their families and friends and desperate to feel at home. And language skills should not be blamed, as there are Canadian and American students who easily and quickly mingle with international ones.

At the end of the semester, I asked my professor and classmates to have a photo together. I was embarrassed when the professor asked me: “Are you serious?” The picture was finally taken with only me and the other international students in it. When I sent the picture overseas, my mother asked “weren’t there any Australians in your class?”

Mojdeh Abedi, South Yarra

It saddens me that your professor reacted that way.  It should not be that way.

Update:    Foreign students cry foul on college switch

Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary Australia, international students, univerisities

The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, today warned western nations to populate or perish.

“There is a crisis in the western world. No western country is producing enough babies to keep the population stable, no western country,” he said.

I don’t suppose Pell has noticed the fact that Australia is just about out of fresh water and housing costs are at record highs.  “Overpopulate and perish” more like it.

Update: Letters to The Editor, The Age

What a stupid message from George Pell (”Populate or perish: Pell”, theage.com.au, 14/7). The biggest problems that humanity faces (environmental degradation and looming competition for resources such as oil and water) can only be solved if the human population declines.

Falling birthrates are essential, and the real answer to the declining numbers in Western societies is to encourage the same trend everywhere else.

- Jason Foster, Windsor

Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary Australia, catholicism, environment, overpopulation, religion, world youth day

Texas puts tight restraints on what teachers can teach about sex

Local latitude goes only so far, thanks to Texas’ appetite for federally funded abstinence programs — it leads the nation in spending for abstinence instruction— and the state’s restrictions on what teachers may tell their students about sex and contraceptives.

In the Austin Independent School District, high school teachers routinely offer pamphlets and brochures about teen pregnancy, contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases in the classroom. But their health textbooks omit information on contraceptives, which is relegated to an optional supplement.

I guess it’s one way to keep the birth rate up.

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas, USA Austin, sex education, teenage pregnancy, Texas

A letter to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald:

On aeroplanes, only window-seaters have the chance of a (limited) view. The rest catch glimpses of sky. On daytime flights, not even that: window shutters are pulled down, lights are dimmed and one mediocre movie after another is shown. The most exciting thing – and I’m not being sarcastic – is the picture of that little aeroplane showing progress across the globe. Oh, and airspeed and outside air temperature.

Once, I had three seats to myself on the side. Flying over Australia was stunning. Lake Eyre had water in it. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Yet planeloads of travellers see nothing but a dimmed cabin, an indifferent movie and themselves. So I’ve a suggestion derived from Sir David Attenborough’s documentaries: nose cam, wing cam, and maybe even tail cam.

On long stretches over mostly empty ocean, show a movie, by all means. The rest of the time, there are many wonders to project on the screens: forests, lakes, islands, the lights of cities as dusk comes on, tops of clouds. It might even lead to a greater appreciation of what we’ve got and stand to lose.

Anne Roberts Leichhardt

Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary, Tech air travel, airlines, travel

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas Austin, boring, groundhog day, hot, summer, sunny, sunshine

New legal threat to teaching evolution in the US

…The new legislation is the latest manoeuvre in a long-running war to challenge the validity of Darwinian evolution as an accepted scientific fact in American classrooms…

…The act is designed to slip ID in “through the back door”, says Forrest, who is a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana University and an expert in the history of creationism. She adds that the bill’s language, which names evolution along with global warming, the origins of life and human cloning as worthy of “open and objective discussion”, is an attempt to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial…

Slashdot: Louisiana Passes Intelligent Design Law

Nigel Stewart Commentary, USA creationism, evolution, intelligent design, science

Texan oil mogul T. Boone Pickens launched an energy plan and social-networking campaign that calls for replacing Middle Eastern oil with wind.

America is in a hole and it’s getting deeper every day. We import 70% of our oil at a cost of $700 billion a year – four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

I’ve been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil.

- T. Boone Pickens

Update: Wind towers in western Texas.

Update: Nuclear call to combat global warming

…the world would need to use every available technology – and develop some more – to reduce global warming at the same time as rapidly expanding its output…

Nigel Stewart Commentary, Texas, USA energy, gas prices, natural gas, oil, Texas, wind farming

A dispute between the Australian art world and advocates for children continues with Art Monthly Australia publishing a naked six-year-old on its July cover. The young girl defended the picture, saying she was proud of it.

“I love the photo so much. It is one of my favourites, if not my favourite photo, my mum has ever taken of me and she has taken so many photos of me.

“I think that the picture my mum took of me had nothing to do with being abused and I think nudity can be a part of art.”

It will again be an interesting time to follow the letters to the editor of major Australian newspapers. The first practical issue that arises is making a judgement about the photo without looking at it. Then, I wonder if even linking to such an image could be a illegal in many places. Perhaps it’s better just not to deal with it and leave open a grey area where artists will generally fear to tread?

Update: Letters to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, July 9, 2008

…The issue is consent, not abuse and certainly not art, and I wonder at Polixeni Papapetrou for using her daughter as the focus and mouthpiece of adult issues she does not understand…

Update: Nude girl art magazine faces censor review

…The Classification Board has asked the art magazine which published a photo of a naked girl on its front cover to submit its publication for review…

Update: Letters to the Editor, The Age,  July 10, 2008

…The arts community thinks that because photographic studies of nude children have been accepted until now, they are forever acceptable. Not so. Times and issues have changed, including the internet, global society and attitudes to child exploitation…

Nigel Stewart Australia, Commentary Australia, news

It might finally be time to retire our trusty (but sometimes buggy) Motorola 360s.  They’re out of contract and out of warranty.

One new option is the OpenMoko Neo FreeRunner GSM – which ought to talk happily to both T-Mobile in the USA, and Telstra or Optus in Australia.  Wifi and bluetooth are supported.  The entire software stack is open-source, which means we can run any software and services we like – rather than whatever junk T-Mobile deems profitable.

My main question at this point is if it supports Qt as well as GTK?

Nigel Stewart Linux, Tech gsm, Linux, open source, phone