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Gainful Employment, Brisbane conferences, An Aussie Mullet, New Zealand, The Truth about East Timor
As mentioned in the past, the only thing that could slow down my writing this year is gainful employment. Well, it appears I have landed just that - with the Boderlands Coooperative, a fairly well organized association of several community organizations sharing administrative and technical resources. Their superb library is enormous! My task (quelle surprise) is systems adminstration and web development. Whilst only a couple of days a week, it does mean reworking my previous plans for written output.
Speakiing of such things In the meantime, I should have section 4-1 of my thesis completed today. I've raised the possibility that the printing press, or specifically the movable type printing press with ideographic script, is perhaps the most revolutionary invention of modernity. No Protestant reformation, no scientific advances, no consolidation of trade and plunder without it. All I have left to do is the section that questions the prospect of modern to postmodern transorfmations. Seeming that I have already written it, this should be pretty easy.
I'm now a confirmed speaker at the System Administrator's Guild of Australia 2004 Conference. I've also pitched an application (albeit late) for the QuestNet conference. So Brisbane/Queensland people can expect to see me later in the year.
In the meantime, I've been doing so unpaid national sysadmin for East Timor (again). There were several frantic emails this past fortnight as ConnectIE changed offices and IANA required notification from Xanana Gusmao to accept the change of national authoritative domain hosts. This proved to be a lot more difficult than it should have.
To keep with a theme of a new recipe per post, here's an aussie mullet I cooked up recently.
Prepare mullet for baking by removing backbone, leaving it flat, ready for stuffing, sewing or tying up. Make sure fish is cleaned, scaled and washed thoroughly with black parts rubbed off. Remove as many bones as possible.
Combine stuffing ingredients and add oil. This keeps spaghetti workable (soft) with other ingredients.
Fill fish with stuffing. Tie securely, use small skewers or sew up sides of fish where necessary. Place fish on oiled baking dish and place in hot oven. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 30-45 minutes, according to fish size. Test to see if cooked. When cooked, remove from oven and when cool enough to handle, remove string or other securing device. This fish can be glazed with geletine or oyster sauce. Decorate with flair. This dish is very nice served with baked, seasoned tomatoes topped with buttered breadcrumbs, onions and braised celery."
Severina_242 and I are off to New Zealand! We're leaving Melbourne on May 12 and returning on the 18th. We'll start in Christchurch, follow the east coast to Dunedin, then onto Invercargill (my birthplace, awww!) and then up to the crazy locale of Queenstown and then back to Christchurch. Should be fun to say the least, although I suspect it's going to be bloody freezing.
Recent attempts to rewrite history over East Timor is pissing me off. Let's state some facts. The Australian government knew that there was going to be milita violence prior to the August 1999 referendum. Not only that, but the Australian government knew that there was a direct link between the militia and the highest levels of the Indonesian military. The Australian government refused to share this information either with the United Nations or the United States, let alone the East Timorese. The Australian government refused to establish a multilateral peacekeeping force prior to poll, despite being invited to do so by the United States. The Australian government adopted a "defeatist" strategy, and was quite happy to have a thousand people killed, 85% of the infrastructure destroyed and 250 000 forced from their homes if that meant that relations with Jakarata remained undisturbed.
It was mass protests and union action (and a very disappointed United States) that eventually forced the government's hand. Within four days the Indonesian government capitulated and let in a multilateral peacekeeping force. Something that Australia deliberately resisted for months.
Baralier brings to me attention that Dungeons and Dragons is now thirty years old. Not only have I been playing for twenty three of those thirty years, I also own an original "white box" set. Ahh, where the joys nerdom and an interest in history meet.
On a related theme of bending-minds, David Cake (who I can't find on LJ..) has provided me a link to a very, very gothic garden - full of psychedelics and poisons. Whilst remaining on a natural theme, the poor residents of the exclusive Melbourne city of Kew are getting their knickers in a knot over bats. Just as well they managed to get the indigenous humans out of there a long time ago, eh?
In a terribly unnatural manner, caseopaya wins the award this post for breaking my brain. Giant mobile bunny slippers!
Finally, just to pull our relative wealth into a global perspective... How rich are you?
How rich are you?
Speakiing of such things In the meantime, I should have section 4-1 of my thesis completed today. I've raised the possibility that the printing press, or specifically the movable type printing press with ideographic script, is perhaps the most revolutionary invention of modernity. No Protestant reformation, no scientific advances, no consolidation of trade and plunder without it. All I have left to do is the section that questions the prospect of modern to postmodern transorfmations. Seeming that I have already written it, this should be pretty easy.
I'm now a confirmed speaker at the System Administrator's Guild of Australia 2004 Conference. I've also pitched an application (albeit late) for the QuestNet conference. So Brisbane/Queensland people can expect to see me later in the year.
In the meantime, I've been doing so unpaid national sysadmin for East Timor (again). There were several frantic emails this past fortnight as ConnectIE changed offices and IANA required notification from Xanana Gusmao to accept the change of national authoritative domain hosts. This proved to be a lot more difficult than it should have.
To keep with a theme of a new recipe per post, here's an aussie mullet I cooked up recently.
Prepare mullet for baking by removing backbone, leaving it flat, ready for stuffing, sewing or tying up. Make sure fish is cleaned, scaled and washed thoroughly with black parts rubbed off. Remove as many bones as possible.
Combine stuffing ingredients and add oil. This keeps spaghetti workable (soft) with other ingredients.
Fill fish with stuffing. Tie securely, use small skewers or sew up sides of fish where necessary. Place fish on oiled baking dish and place in hot oven. Reduce heat and cook slowly for 30-45 minutes, according to fish size. Test to see if cooked. When cooked, remove from oven and when cool enough to handle, remove string or other securing device. This fish can be glazed with geletine or oyster sauce. Decorate with flair. This dish is very nice served with baked, seasoned tomatoes topped with buttered breadcrumbs, onions and braised celery."
Severina_242 and I are off to New Zealand! We're leaving Melbourne on May 12 and returning on the 18th. We'll start in Christchurch, follow the east coast to Dunedin, then onto Invercargill (my birthplace, awww!) and then up to the crazy locale of Queenstown and then back to Christchurch. Should be fun to say the least, although I suspect it's going to be bloody freezing.
Recent attempts to rewrite history over East Timor is pissing me off. Let's state some facts. The Australian government knew that there was going to be milita violence prior to the August 1999 referendum. Not only that, but the Australian government knew that there was a direct link between the militia and the highest levels of the Indonesian military. The Australian government refused to share this information either with the United Nations or the United States, let alone the East Timorese. The Australian government refused to establish a multilateral peacekeeping force prior to poll, despite being invited to do so by the United States. The Australian government adopted a "defeatist" strategy, and was quite happy to have a thousand people killed, 85% of the infrastructure destroyed and 250 000 forced from their homes if that meant that relations with Jakarata remained undisturbed.
It was mass protests and union action (and a very disappointed United States) that eventually forced the government's hand. Within four days the Indonesian government capitulated and let in a multilateral peacekeeping force. Something that Australia deliberately resisted for months.
Baralier brings to me attention that Dungeons and Dragons is now thirty years old. Not only have I been playing for twenty three of those thirty years, I also own an original "white box" set. Ahh, where the joys nerdom and an interest in history meet.
On a related theme of bending-minds, David Cake (who I can't find on LJ..) has provided me a link to a very, very gothic garden - full of psychedelics and poisons. Whilst remaining on a natural theme, the poor residents of the exclusive Melbourne city of Kew are getting their knickers in a knot over bats. Just as well they managed to get the indigenous humans out of there a long time ago, eh?
In a terribly unnatural manner, caseopaya wins the award this post for breaking my brain. Giant mobile bunny slippers!
Finally, just to pull our relative wealth into a global perspective... How rich are you?
How rich are you?
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broken
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:-)
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Imagine what the streets would like if they were a preferred mode of transport.... ;-)
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Hey, that's tres cool. Which one is that? Perhaps I can work out an excuse so we can meet during workhours!
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Call me. We'll get drunk.
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I think that's a fine idea. Better collect the rest of the brissie/qld crowd as well. This could be fun.
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Stuff the Australian government - I had a pretty good idea of those two things just by reading the papers and applying a bit of common sense. It never ceased to amaze me how far we were willing to compromise on basic human-rights issues to mollify the thugs in TNI and their friends.
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The comparison I'm making is between "having a bloody good suspiciion" (which any thinking person had) and conclusive proof - which the Australian government had through intercepted telephone conversations etc.
The Australian policy in East Timor and Indonesia has been one of "stability at any cost" for some time. Human rights are inconsequential - and that goes for governments of all stripes.
One of the things that the East Timorese themselves have always been good at distinguishing - the difference between the views of the Australian population and the views of the Australian government.
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Fair enough distinction. However, IMHO that "bloody good suspicion" was strong enough to have warranted much more care than the government took - even if there had been no conclusive proof available to them, as there was.
The Australian policy in East Timor and Indonesia has been one of "stability at any cost" for some time.
Which, ironically enough, didn't even buy us stability in the end.
One of the things that struck me as monumentally stupid was the way Australia's SAS were training Kopassus only a year or so before Kopassus-trained militia were shooting at Australian troops in East Timor, well after it became apparent that trouble was brewing.
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No, it never does. You can delay instability with repression, but it'll just build up - even over decades.
re: Kopassus
For all his tough talk on terrorism Howard (and his predecessors) did an excellent job at funding and training the worst terrorist organization in the region.
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Don't mind me, I'm the one in the corner sobbing with jealousy.
Have a great time - I wholeheartedly recommend going to Larnarch's Castle while in Dunedin. Marvellous views of the entire harbour.
And yes. Bring thermals and lots of them.
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Ahh, yes, I've already seen piccies of that castle. Looks great!
The South Island does seem to be extraordinarily beautiful and caught in a cultural timewarp as a piece of Anglicized Scotland. I'm not too sure what to make of it all from my readings.
I'm looking forward to the bungy jump at Queenstown...
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While I am unsurprised by the response of our foreign & defence establishment over East Timor, there is a pointed irony in the US being prepared to stand up to Indonesia when we were reluctanct. Back in about 1960, Australia was prepared to stand up to Indonesia over Dutch New Guinea, the US wouldn't be in it. So Irian Jaya became Indonesian. Not a good outcome.
Another irony is that East Timor still gets us brownie points in the US, since it was an effective peacekeeping force not led by the US.
(One of the not-much-noticed themes in all this, is that a US official (forget name and date) visited trying to basically wakke our foreign, defence & commentariat establishment to the reality that we and Taiwan are not in as different situations as is so often glibly assumed.)
Re: Yes, well
Irian Jaya (aka West Papua) is going to be a thorn in Indonesia's side for many years to come. In fact, all of Indonesia is going to be problematic for the central authorities in Jakarta. I really don't think a centralized government is a good idea for a place that consists of somewhere between 13 and 17 thousand islands and some 250 languages. A federal structure would be a lot more sensible.
WRT to East Timor and the US, there is no doubt that American activists did an extraordinary and professional job over the years at lobbying politicians of all stripes over the situation in East Timor. The cynical side of me suggests it was just geographically distant enough with only a few oppositional marginal interests in the arms industry to make a succesful cause.
Re: Yes, well
(2) Javanese Empire. Some have regularly suggested that proping up the Javanese Empire (aka Indonesia) is not a good long run prospect. The usual counter to that though is the spectre of a lot of squabbling weak states, some of which are likely to end up deeply criminally-penetrated (to which, I guess, the response is, 'and Indonesia ain't?') or Islamist or simply an avenue for Chinese adventurism.
Re: Yes, well
Good point wrt cynicism. Although any person with an ounce of humanity would have been sickened by how "principled" Gareth Evans was wrt apartheid compared to how opportunistic he was wrt to East Timor.
WRT the Javanese Empire, even if a federal structure failed and it became a balkanized region of squabbling states, some deeply criminally penetrated, so what? None would be powerful enough to gain any significant power in the region - and those which do support a decent political and economic system could receive beneficial arrangements and encouragement, rather than having to support the central body with the ideal hope that some good may come of it.
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He queried that, saying such estimates made BHP central into a value-reducing entity.
I had no problems with that, myself.
I can well believe a similar judgement being correct about Indonesia.
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Loved the 'how rich are you' link. Always good to be reminded just how greedy we are here in America.
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People in the United States are, on average, very very rich compared to most of the world (IIRC they're not quite the richest - that belongs to Luxembourg).
IIRC the international average income per capita per year is something close to $7000 USD per annum. I'd be quite happy to settle for that if I knew that it meant an end tostarvation etc.
Something that does worry the rest of the world is the US's consumption of resources. Could you cut down on the oil, huh? Just a little bit.
(I know, Australia is hardly one to talk on a per capita basis either). Bleh. Australian cities are beginning to look like LA in terms of sprawl... "Hey, we have heaps of land! Everyone should have a quarter-acre block!"....
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My brother and I were talking
yesterdayMonday (my how time flies) about the differences in world habits versus America when it comes to cars: Even people in densely populated cities, like NYC, have cars, generally. They may not use them as often as those of us in the suburbs, but still more than people in Europe or Asia, I suspect.The US grew up (as, I suspect did Australia) with very mediocre public transportation in all but the largest cities. When I visited European cities, I was astonished at how easy it was to get around. Even Paris, which is Huge, can be navigated quite easily without an automobile.
It is my hope that the current rising fuel prices [still probably among the cheapest in the world, though, at less than $2US/gallon (which is what, $.60/ litre or so?)] will inspire consumers, manufacturers and the government to set policy which encourages the production, importation and purchase of smaller, more efficient cars.
Borderlands
I used to drop in now and then but haven't been since I moved to Richmond, which is no excuse as it's not that far from Hawthorn.
Re: Borderlands
That multicoloured website was scary! Finding out there was 120 files scattered over seven years (not including images) was a bit disconcerting as well.
I'm currently doing the gentle conversion of the hodge-podge of a heterogenous network (Windows XP Professional, Windows NT 4 server, a Linux e-smith, Linux Fedora, Mac OS X) into something a little more sensible.
I'll start with a consistent distribution of Linux on the servers.