Geekcorps Can TV
November 20, 2006The Geekcorps is a volunteer project to transfer technical knowledge into the third world, typically Africa. Courtesy of Jordan, they’ve updated the old trick of building unidirectional WiFi antennae out of Pringles cans into a method of supplying local video broadcasting, dubbed the CanTV.
How Israel lost the war
October 12, 2006Asia Times provides a detailed description of the strategic outcome of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It is a sobering account of how prepared Hezbollah were for Israel’s offensive.
Iraq by the numbers
October 1, 2006Tom Engelhardt does an excellent job summarising the current state of Iraq. It’s sobering picture that any decent journalist at the NYT, Time or Newsweek should be able to draw also, but do not. If you want a concise snapshot of the state of the civil war in Iraq, this is one of the best.
Who killed the electric car?
September 14, 2006The excellent weekly news program Dateline, on Australian SBS television has a cracker of a story about the U.S. car company General Motors killing the electric car. For a country like Australia with abundant daily sunshine, it’s a no-brainer. The follow up story on electronic rental bicycles in Lyon also resonates now that I’m enjoying…
Banksy strikes again
September 13, 2006Banksy hits Disneyland. Courtesy of Brett. Actually Aussie John Saffran pulled a similar stunt at Disneyland many years ago, planting a fake caption under a photo of Walt, noting his anti-semitism.
Scholars & Artists for International Democracy
September 8, 2006As part of my work in music cognition, I attended the 9th International conference on Music Perception and Cognition. Subsequent to that meeting, a meeting of scholars convened a second meeting of Scholars and Artists for International Democracy, which calls for a return to internationalism and rejects the unprovoked invasion of Iraq and the ongoing…
Wiretapping to Intimidate the Press
May 15, 2006If the report by the U.S ABC is indeed true, the Bush administration has been using it’s recently disclosed program by the N.S.A to trace U.S. domestic phone records as a means of spying on the press in order to trace government leaks. This was previously reported much earlier by smaller online reporters at the…
Stephen Colbert
May 4, 2006You must see Stephen Colbert’s performance at the Washington reporters club dinner. Democracy Now! has it. It truly is one of the most amazing pieces of political satire that’s ever been performed, while just a few feet from the Prez himself. Astounding.
Free West Papua!
April 11, 2006The bluster by Indonesia, feigning great indignation that Australia this time actually met it’s obligations under the U.N Charter of Human Rights and accepted West Papuan refugees from the abuse by Indonesian military, is hardly surprising.