Well, oil be darned

Scouring the WWW for signs of manufacturers still using partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils and thus encumbering hapless people with poisonous trans fats (one of my campaigns - trying to pressure the Australian government into labelling products) I came upon these.
Well, we knew the Obamas were foodies!






What's the bet President Obama has not the faintest idea of this bizarre namesake!
At least they seem to be trans-fat free.
Now I'm trying to work out the 90 countries where this is supposed to be best-selling. Not this one.

The Olympic torch debacle

The Olympic torch relay should be canned.
In the last two Olympics, I recall perceiving it as a jealously-rivalled elitist exercise, a lot of fuss enabling selected people to show off for a moment here or there.

This Olympics, no one knows or cares who are the people getting to show off with a little torch dash. It is all about the Chinese goon guards "protecting" the torch - and, of course, the people protesting China's treatment of Tibet.
What a mess.

China, why can't you let us love you? What on earth are you thinking with the global turnoff you are engendering by sending these highly-trained military thugs around the world in the name of peace and sport? Ugly, ugly, ugly.

If it teaches us one thing, it is that the torch relay was always a grotesque piece of nationalistic overkill.
Let it not be forgotten, it was introduced by none other than Adolf Hitler!


This cartoon, so apt in its glorious ironies, has been doing the email rounds. I think the signature attributes Garison of the Milwaukee Sentinel.

Maxine!

The Prime Minister loses his seat.
A female journalist usurps him.
How sweet it is.

An appalling, mean-spirited man replaced by an urbane and emancipated woman.
Maxine McKew replaced John Howard in the seat of Bennelong. A seat Howard has held for 33 years.

History can be beautiful.

This is the stellar moment in what is being described as a "Ruddslide".
A transforming moment for the country.

Faith is restored.

Bruce Hawker - Labor's man of the soak cycle

The politicians, now vying for leadership of Australia, tell us that our broadband services cost nine times as much as that of the rest of the world and are 35 times slower. Labor candidate Kevin Rudd promises to amend this and to bring this nation up to speed, literally. Give or take five or so years to do it.
John Howard says Rudd is out of date and we've suddenly gone high speed.
Huh?
You could have fooled me.

This country is disadvantaged by its small population and large areas in issues such as the Internet. However, it really can't brag.
It has been slow to clue up from the word go - treating the Internet with absurd suspicion, unwilling to accept its global potency.
Right now there is a spin doctor called Bruce Hawker who is out there telling the country that "the internet is very much in its infancy"! The only value of YouTube and viral communications is that the mainstream media picks it up.
Huh?
Where has he been?

How embarrassing for a man to tout himself as a political strategist and be so painfully out of touch.
It has taken a long time for the mainstream media to clue up to the vast interactive population on the Internet. I know. I have tried to jog mainstream media for years and years - finding that they were only interested in stories which made the Internet into some sort of evil bogeyman.
This, of course, because mainstream media was frightened of the Internet. To its interests, the Internet was a bogeyman - a growing rival for consumer attention.
And so the scare stories revved up over the years and there was never anything positive to be said about the Internet.
And the real estate world moved online.
And the travel world moved online.
The marketplace was not as slow as the mainstream media. To hell with the bogeyman. It saw the consumers online en masse.
Financial institutions went online...everything has followed the people out into their anarchical virtual world of free speech.
Finally, the mainstream media realised that it had to bite the bullet, albeit reluctantly, and compete for an online market. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

So now the only person who seems to think the Internet is some sort of newly-spawned amateur hour is one Bruce Hawker.
Spin doctor? I don't think so. Soak Cycle is more like it.
Let me tell you Mr Hawker, the mainstream media picks up YouTube and blogs and internet activities because they are news. If the mainstream want to stay up with what is happening, it has to go online and be online. You could have called the Internet an infant a decade ago. But to do so in 2007 just shows how painfully out of touch you are.

God help Labor for employing you as an advisor.

Oh dear.