About to fly to Perth, Prosper, Katrina.

[tcpip]

About to hop on the big silver bird and fly to Perth for a week or so. Finished most of my data for my presentation at the SAGE-AU conference. On Saturday at 7pm there will be a eating, drinking and talking fest which I'm hosting at:

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Oxford Hotel
368 Oxford St Leederville WA 6007
ph: (08) 9444 2193 Hotels--Accommodation

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So leave an el-jay comment if you expect to turn up, so myself and the hotel have some sort of idea of numbers. Expected activities, apart from SAGE-AU, include a visit to Murdoch University where the lovely people at MARS are holding a "How to Host a Murder" eve. Add that to two days of the conference and possibly a journey down south and all shall be good.

Presentation at Prosper Australia went extremely well. There were a few surprises in the audience, including the Herald Sun reporter who interviewed me on the notorious tram-ticket case and Greg T. Both were their due to their respective fathers being members of the organisation.

Here's a prediction: The Liberal Party may self-destruct in a very messy manner. The rise of the extreme religious right in the party, is marginalising the more centrist liberals. The latter of course don't have the numbers and the former don't care about party unity. They have an agenda of fire and brimstone. Shame we're the one's who have to receive their "inspired" governance.

So, hurrican Katrina. Kill those who try to get food and water. When is a looter not a looter? This is a disaster of epic proportions. Not surprisingly many are having a go at the Bush administration as up to 10,000 are feared dead. Time to face the awful questions of responsibility. This guy is a hero. How did Cuba cope? With decentralised administration and social capital of course.

Comments

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

One editor snags a pre-captioned photo off the wire and sticks it up on the site; another snags a different photo off the wire and sticks it up half an hour later. There's no obvious reason for them to be checking all their content against all their other content, and indeed it'd be impossible to do.

Asked to compare only those two pictures, anybody can see that it's a bad idea. But they're not working with only those two; they're working with hundreds of pictures and reports. It's like one of those 'Where's Wally?' puzzles - easy to see once you know where to look.

anyway this was the one i think: http://www.livejournal.com/users/azad_slide/357962.html

In reference to the claim that "AFP has another article in which they call black people looters but not white people"? I can't see any white people *in* the sole AFP-credited photo in that post. AFAICT, both services are working on the principle that if their journalists actually see people take stuff from inside stores they can call it 'looting', otherwise they avoid the word; which photos/articles break that rule?

(Last picture on that page is uncredited, but from the filename looks to be AP; note that although it shows a black man jumping out of a broken store window, he's *not* described as a 'looter' - presumably because he's not obviously carrying anything.)