Intelligent Design meets the Whaling War

Are there no lengths to which Sea Shepherd will not stoop to stop Global Warming?

Many of you naively believe that the whaling war is about protecting endangered species from Japanese "scientists", but that's because you haven't come to recognize that there is a subtle form of Intelligent Design behind the crew of the Steve Irwin getting arrested for piracy.

VoiceThread

I just came across VoiceThread, a new collaborative media site which aims to facilitate "Group conversations around images, docs and videos. It allows not only text comments, but audio and video comments, and even doodling (whiteboard style) on the presentation itself.

This has all sorts of amazing applications, but I've embedded this particular VoiceThread because I found it very moving, and it really captures the storytelling element of media and its collective emotional function.

In it, a woman from New Orleans shows her son around the house they lived in before Katrina, which he was too young to remember. This would be little more than a poignant family slideshow, were it not for Les (unrelated to the author) who has logged in to thank her for sharing her memories of his hometown before the flood.

German politician flames Wikipedia, then reverts

A little over a week ago, the SMH reprinted a Reuters report about criminal charges filed against the German version of Wikipedia by a left-wing German politician, Katina Schubert, over what she considered to be the excessive use of Nazi symbolism, especially on the site's page on the Hitler Youth.

Fortunately, by the time the Oz and Yahoo!7News picked up the story, Schubert's party - Die Linke- had made it clear that she did not have their support in bringing the charge, which she promptly dropped, although not before claiming a victory for beginning the "debate".

I'm starting to think we need some kind of award for naive attacks on Wikipedia. Any suggestions for a title?

Liberal party ad bonanza

I thought the Liberal party's advertising onslaught last night was pretty intense in the leadup to the Wednesday night cut off for TV and radio election ads.

But today, we've gone from the annoying to the ridiculous. Liberal party ads are all over the SMH today, on the very same pages reporting the story about the Libs' Lindsay leaflet scandal.

Even Paul Keating's opinion piece had to compete with the Liberals scare campaign.

But never fear... the Tele is here!

In a shock move(!?), the Daily Telegraph has just announced it will back Kevin Rudd in the election on Saturday, citing John Howard's planned retirement in the middle of his next term as their justification.

"Our three-year terms of Federal Government are short enough without the added downside of the candidate for Prime Minister making a vague promise to walk away at half-way through.

"The 18-month to two year construction Mr Howard has put on his departure is, bluntly, an insult to the voters' collective intelligence."

...like the invasion of Iraq, climate change scepticism, detention centres, the AWB scandal, suspension of the rule of law for Dr Hanif and David Hicks, politicisation of the bureaucracy and the AFP, repeal of civil liberties, work choices (ha ha), excessive government secrecy, (it goes on and on) weren't enough!