Two (2) examples of how Twitter is dumbing down the world

Example 1. (One) Paul Chambers:

Paul the pom has become the first pommie to be convicted of a criminal offence for what he wrote on Twitter:

Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!

Chambers only sent his tweet to his 600 followers and being a nobody he probably thought nothing would come of it (Think again dumbo). But as The Age reports, the tweet was found by an airport manager doing an “unrelated computer search” that I guess is what might happen when you tweet about blowing up an airport and you are even stupid enough to name it. The idjut was arrested by anti-terror police at his office and charged. Paul had his iPhone and two computers impounded, was fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 costs. He was also sacked from his job at a car distribution firm.

But how does this first (1st) example show how Twitter is dumbing down the world I hear you ask?

Are you stupid? It Speaks for itself

………………

Example Two (2) Mark Pesce:

This Aussie has bursted in print on ‘The Drum’ with his spirited defence of what peoples like Devney & Devine tweet.

But I bet hes wishing he read example number one (1) first before he said we should all chill out and what’s written on Twiiter does not matter:

Judging from the feigned shock from the public, the horror and outrage from the tabloid set, and the deleted tweets in nearly everyone’s timeline, I’d suggest people are taking things a bit too seriously – and a bit too far.

Mark finished his piece with a love-in moment, like we is all one big happy twitter family singing Bandaids We are the world:

Twitter is all of us, at our best and at our worst. You can’t just look away. This is who we are.

And how does this second (2nd) example show how Twitter is dumbing down the world?

He’s a teacher!

Wort, rotational velocity and magic puddings

Well here was me waking up and thinking that I would have to dig through the most dreary news from our most dreary Treasurer and try to distill some truth from the wort of Labor spin and misdirection that is the budget and what should I find in today’s news but a lovely nugget of goodness; Labour is out of No 10 and the Conservatives will form the next British government. A far more cheery prospect on this fine autumn morning.

Queen Elizabeth II greets David Cameron at Buckingham Palace in an audience to invite him to be the next Prime Minister in London. Source: Getty Images

CONSERVATIVE leader David Cameron has become Britain’s youngest prime minister in almost 200 years, after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.

In a carefully choreographed dance, Cameron visited Buckingham Palace and was asked to form a government by Queen Elizabeth II less than an hour after Brown himself tendered his resignation to the monarch.

Cameron, whose party won the most House of Commons seats in last week’s election but fell just short of a majority, is, at 43, the youngest British leader since Lord Liverpool in 1812.

The high political drama came as the Conservatives and the third-place Liberal Democrats hammered out the details of a coalition deal after the country’s inconclusive election.

Standing outside 10 Downing St. alongside his wife Sarah, Brown announced he would travel to see the monarch to resign – allowing Cameron to take office, possibly as part of deal with Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Of course I am yet to find out the details and I have some reservations about the terms that he has had to pay for a deal with the Lib Dems but an end to Labour rule is a good thing and I really hope that the land of my forebears can now have a chance to recover from the PC madness that has made it the epitome of officious stupidity, now what was that about a grand repeal bill???

Next cab of the rank is our Dear Brother Number One… assuming that there is not a coup from Labor’s red army faction that is…
Cheers Comrades

Latte Apocalypse !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news  to my Latte sipping™ Comrades but it looks like the cost of your favourite non booze  tipple is about to rise!

Coffee suppliers say they have been battling rising costs for a number of months – and it appears consumers will have to foot the bill.

Brisbane’s Merlo Coffee told brisbanetimes.com.au it had been holding off on increasing prices, but financial pressure had finally forced their hand.

“We’ve seen prices of our coffee beans steadily increasing for the past 18 months,” a Merlo spokesperson said.

Costs have also skyrocketed for sugar, cocoa and milk powder, as well as shipping and packaging, suppliers say.

Merlo is expected to raise the cost of an average coffee by 25 cents soon.

[...]

Prices are set to increase even further as of July 1, with the introduction of wage increases for hospitality workers.

As part of the changes, many cafes will have to pay their casual staff penalties of 20 per cent extra on Saturdays and 50 per cent on Sundays.

“To cope, the cafe owner will have to pay the staff with the increased coffee price,” Ms Di Bella said.

Just what is the world coming to when poor honest latte sippers are to be hit hardest where it hurts the most? And just what will our dear Brother Number One do about this impending disaster for his support base in the upcoming budget? I think that the truth will be revealed that the secret tea drinkers in his cabinet (Comrade Swan and Ms Gillard) have knee capped our Dear Brother Number One and on top of this price rise in one of life’s necessities (lattes) that there is to be a new super tax on lattes!
Why else has there been such an extraordinary lack of leaks from the budget bunker this year?

All that I can say to my latte sipping friends is make the most you coffee today because just as it is for  the tobacco addicts this  heartless government see you all as fat milch cows ready to have your pockets emptied..

Its a sad day for coffee lovers Comrades

Pure Ray Martin

Just a quicky today folks. This has really got my week off to a real funny start:

‘Private’ tweet republication is now a credible form of blogging

Iain, you are now officially excused for all your Twitter post sins of the past it seems.

Davros Rudd???

I was watching Doctor Who last night and now that we are a few episodes into the latest incarnation of the series I could not suppress my pleasure at the way that the new hand at the helm of the show has been able to rescue it from the PC excesses of the previous production. I had serious reservations about Matt Smith as the Doctor and now I find that I am looking forward to each new episode.

But what pray tell has a British TV show got to do with the latest bad opinion poll results for Brother Number One?

KEVIN Rudd’s approval rating has plunged by a massive 14 points in three weeks and the Coalition is now level-pegging with Labor in two-party terms, in an Age/Nielsen poll that will send shockwaves through the government.

For the first time, more people disapprove than approve of the Prime Minister’s performance – a dramatic contrast to his ratings in the high 60s late last year.

Disapproval leapt 13 points to 49 per cent, taking it above his 45 per cent approval rating, which is his lowest rating ever.

He is only narrowly ahead of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott as ”trustworthy” – 43 per cent to 40 per cent. Mr Rudd is regarded as untrustworthy by 38 per cent, compared to 34 per cent for Mr Abbott.

Brother Number One is looking more and more like he will be remembered along with the Scullen Government for only managing to serve only one term in office. So perhaps the voters of this country see  his government is rather like the Daleks in the episode that screened last week , where the “Ironsides” sold themselves as England’s Savior against the Nazi Blitz but in the nick of time they were  revealed as the destroyers that they always are. The Australian people are clearly getting the message that Brother Number One is no saviour but I wonder how long it will be before they realise that he is our very own Davros?

Cheers Comrades

And she is better looking than Clarkson….

I just love this woman’s enthusiasm for a fast car and after my earlier post about fake orgasms  on TV I think that this is a nice counterpoint.

Cheers Comrades

Foodie porn fakes orgasam!!!

I am no fan of cooking shows, well except for anything with Nigella Lawson doing the business, but I have a brother who literally gobbles up any kind of cooking show, heck he even collect cook books. I make many jokes about such things being “Foodie Porn” and like sexual pornography cooking shows are all about vicarious enjoyment. With the more prosaic pornography what is valued is the genuineness of the climax, It just does not “work” if it is too fake.

Now I take pride in the fact that I have never watched  “Master chef’” my approach to cooking is to make the most of the ingredients entirely without pretentious and pointless flourishes. I try to let the food do the talking , sorry, I digress. The story that contestants have been allowed to “re plate” their  dishes is hardly surprising:

On Tuesday night, Callum Hann, 20, was lauded by judge Matt Preston for the presentation of a caramel parfait glace dessert, his attempt at pastry chef Philippa Sibley’s signature dish.

Hann was given one and three-quarter hours to complete the dish before the same plate was supposedly presented to the MasterChef judges for a blind tasting against Sibley’s version.

But viewers were not told that Hann was allowed to re-plate the dessert and perfect a key component – the spoon-shaped quenelles of chocolate mousse – off screen.

When the dish was presented to judges Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris, it clearly looked different to the version viewers had seen on screen at the completion of the challenge moments earlier.

Hann’s roughly finished mousse ovals appeared smooth and evenly shaped, and a richer, darker colour, while the dessert base also looked different. It was suddenly flawless, no longer cracked and broken on the edges.

Preston was full of praise, telling Hann: “Three quenelles exactly the same size. A beautiful crisp, square, sharp-edged block of your light sponge. A little caramel base. Those are the things that made your dish stand out.”

The Sunday Telegraph noticed the differences in the dish and questioned executive producer Margaret Bashfield, who was adamant Hann used his original mixture to create the new quenelles, despite colour discrepancies on the screen.

Bashfield confessed TV trickery was occasionally employed in the series – which carries $100,000 prizemoney and a cookbook deal for the winner – and dishes were sometimes “re-plated”.

“Due to the duration of the filming process, on rare occasions both the contestant and the celebrity chef in MasterChef’s Celebrity Chef Challenge are offered the opportunity to re-plate dishes between the completion of the challenge and the tasting,” she said.

Daily Telegraph

This is what you get when you turn the preparation of food into a fashion event, you get fake (chocolate Mouse) tits, affectation and fake orgasms.

Cheers  Comrades

“Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said it was “irresponsible and disappointing” for the Liberal leader to encourage climate-change scepticism in the classroom.”

At my daughter’s school like so many other public schools most of the teachers are “with the program” when it comes to the anthropogenic climate change proposition. This of course creates a dilemma for any parent who is sceptical about this doom-laden religious argument. In the first instance I don’t want to undermine my children’s faith in their teachers but I also don’t want then to be brainwashed into believing the green religion either. As parents we are asked if we want our children to attend religious instruction so perhaps the time has come for parents to be asked if they want their children to be taught the Climate change orthodoxy as well.

Which sort of brings me to the piece I found in todays OZ :

Mr Abbott’s impromptu history lesson came in a question-and-answer session with students during a visit to the Trinity Gardens Primary School in the marginal federal seat of Sturt, held by Liberal Chris Pyne.

Mr Abbott asked the students if they knew about the Ice Age and if it “was caused by human beings”.

“OK, so the climate has changed over the eons and we know from history, at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth the climate was considerably warmer than it is now,” Mr Abbott said.

“And then during what they called the Dark Ages it was colder. Then there was the medieval warm period. Climate change happens all the time and it is not man that drives those climate changes back in history.

“It is an open question how much the climate changes today and what role man plays.”

Penny Wong is turning into a joke, for despite her generally mellow speaking voice ,on the issue of climate change she is just a boring shrill. I want my children (and by extension all children) to grow up with open and questioning minds that don’t just accept religious propositions when they are put to them. The irony is that  Tony Abbott could be expected to be the one to offer the hard line in a religious argument  But it is the dour Ms  Wong who does so. As a minister who now has no real purpose ( since Brother Number One shelved the CPRS) all that she has left is to whine about having the young minds of the country discouraged from believing that humanity is solely responsible for climate change…

Cheers Comrades

I am not afraid to ask the hard questions and here it is:

Should we ban the burker?

(and how do you spell it?)

I know this is contraverse but look, we have an election coming up and you just know this has to be a big part of it. Thats why the Liberal party wants to make the burker a really big deal and why not? Politics should not be about boring topics like the economy, insulation and the size of peter Garret’s dome. It should be about polerising the public:

Australia’s peak Islamic organisation has reacted with disappointment over Liberal Senator Cory Bernadi’s comments yesterday that the burka is “un-Australian” and should be banned.

South Australian Senator Bernardi lashed out in an article which was published on The Drum website, saying the burka “needs to be binned”.

He called it a “repressive domination of men over women” and said it establishes “different sets and expectations in society”.

This should stir youse commentaters into action. Where is HJ these days BTW?

But a warning from the messenger. Do not shoot me. I am just the catalist bringing you the cutting-edge topics of disgustion. Someone has to do it now that Devney is on the dole.

(PS: In my opinion any really ugly muslim women should be allowed to keep it)

The Aussie way is the best way, UK election outcome TBA

Regular readers will no doubt realise that I am hoping that David Cameron gets over the line with a workable majority when the poll result of the election is known sometime later today. As I write the polls are yet to close in the UK and unlike here in the antipodes the UK count will not be broadcast. Brits have to wait until the count is done and the winners in each seat is declared.

DAVID Cameron was on the verge of becoming Britain’s prime minister this morning as he battled to convert a final opinion poll lead into a governing majority after the most remarkable British election campaign in decades.

Votes were cast overnight (AEST) following a round of election-day polls that suggested Mr Cameron’s Conservatives would replace Labour as the largest party, while falling short of a majority.

Conservatives claimed their big-spending campaign in marginal seats would push them over the top and avoid the need to form a formal or informal coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the star performers of the campaign.

Thanks to the new popularity of leader Nick Clegg, the Lib Dems seemed certain to record the strongest third-party performance in Britain for more than 80 years.

[...]

The stakes of the election were unusually high because Mr Clegg promised that if he won the balance of power, he would push for electoral reforms, which could bring an end to the era of single-party governments in Britain.

Mr Clegg has demanded proportional representation, which would allow each party’s support among voters to be more accurately reflected in the number of seats it wins in parliament, making it impossible for a single party to win a mandate in an increasingly fractured multi-party contest.

That would usher in a new era of European-style coalition governments, with the centrist Lib Dems well placed to rule in coalition with either the Labour or Conservative parties.

Mr Cameron faces a daunting challenge if he has to rule with a slim majority or even a minority in parliament because the next government will have to impose huge spending cuts and tax rises to bring the budget deficit under control.

While I think that preferential voting has some clear merit I have become much less supportive of proportional representation for the primary chamber of a parliament, and I think that Neck Clegg’s desire for that will be a disaster, and you only have to look to the democratic meltdown in Greece to see the ultimate fate of that kind of electoral system. We have the right idea here, a house of Reps elected by single member electorates and a house of review elected by proportional representation.

The Aussie way is the best way, even for the old country.

Bewdy Comrades

Marina Orlova the word “appreciate” and Naplan testing

Well I hope that You all now understand the word “appreciate”  because I have used this vid to be a cypher for the burning education question here and that is will teachers defy the rulings saying that they can’t refuse to supervise the Naplan tests in our schools?

There is also the fact that Marina Orlova is just the sort of teacher that every school boy would have wanted to have in the classroom.

Cheers Comrades

“intellectual dishonesty, the flimsy arguments and the distorted data”

Picture courtesy of Ray Dixon( click to see his post about this)

The age of consent in this country is 16 and anyone who has sex with a child under that age is committing one of our most seriously abhorrent crimes. It is just as abhorrent to suggest  having sex with a child. It is not even something that we make jokes about in private. Yet for some of the “anything goes”  left publishing a “joke” about Bindi Irwin should not have been a sacking offence. when I tried to post this comment:Guess what appeared in its place?

well it was this:

I just have to ask my learned friend just how the comment I submitted qualifies as speculation about anyone’s off line activity? Offensive or otherwise?  I mention no names I make no accusations of any wrong doing , heck I don’t even mention the sipping of Lattes . I accept that any site can accept or reject comments at their discretion but to do what Jeremy Sear  has done here (which misrepresents the content of my rejected comment ) is just flat out dishonest in the way that it characterizes  the comment that I posted. The blog in question has this rather noble mission statement at the top right hand side of its page:

There is the sheer hypocrisy of claiming to be about exposing “intellectual dishonesty, the flimsy arguments and the distorted data” whilst doing precisely that in the way that he manages the comments to his postings beggars belief.

Disgusted Comrades

But sadly not surprised

Geography .. do they still teach it?

Teen sailor Jessica Watson has not travelled far enough to claim the record for being the youngest person to sail solo, non-stop and unassisted around the world

Maybe she shoulda stayed @ school longer.

Then she might of known the world is thicker in the middle.

Should comrade Gillard be sent to share a cell with citizen Garrett?

I have done a little bit of building and it staggers me that the costs of projects have been so inflated in the BER projects for state schools. The contrast between building in schools and building big offices is stark enough but the difference in value for money between private and public schools really cuts to the chase.

Under the scheme, private schools have self-managed projects outside the fee-heavy template structures of the state governments and have overwhelmingly received better value for money.

Mount Evelyn Christian School in Melbourne’s west is building a 1600 square metre architect-designed hall, which which will house two basketball courts, a rock climbing wall and a stage, among other things, for $2.27 million, or $1420 a square metre. By contrast the standard “14 core” communal hall and shade area being rolled out at hundreds of public schools costs $5700 a square metre.

Despite repeated requests, Education Minister Julia Gillard and the NSW education department have been unable to adequately explain why state schools were being forced to pay such high prices for structures.

In recent months both governments have shrugged off claims of cost blow-outs, claiming higher costs are a result of “higher quality” buildings and because of other specific costs such as managing contractors having to perform “working with children” checks.

However neither government has been able to show how BER school buildings were of a higher quality than other school buildings being delivered across the nation. Further, inquiries by The Australian have found working with children checks are not only free but, according to the NSW Working with Children program itself, are considered unnecessary for the scheme.

What disappoints me most about this stark proof of incompetence of Comrade Gillard and her state government co-conspirators is that so many people from the left are either ignoring this issue or playing it down, mainly because they don’t want to be seen to offering any support to the opposition.

But what it proves is that Comrade Gillard is just as incompetent at administration as citizen Garrett was with the Pink Batts, the only difference is that she has yet to have deaths on her watch.

Cheers Comrades

8)

Keeping good company…

In my previous post about The tax hike on Gaspers one of my commentators made precisely the same observation…

The South Australian Senator said smoking was a “hideous habit” but people had the right to indulge it in a free country.

“We’ve all got to choose our way to go, everyone’s going to die of something,” he said.

“If people choose to die of smoking, I as a Liberal think well that’s your problem but go for it.”

The government was “slugging poor old smokers every time they need money” by proposing the tax hike.

But being a lefty I sort of doubt that he will be so pleased about the company that he is keeping on this issue…
Gasp again Comrades