Now I’m not saying that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a young girl in 1990, but I have not yet been shown any good evidence that he didn’t! There also seems to be a concerted effort to silence those brave enough to speak out!

What is Mr. Beck hiding?

Progress is achieved by taking part, not by switching off.

Just a note to all you lovely Internet folk: The moment you start calling people sheep, whatever argument you were trying to make lost all credibility and interest.

Really. It’s old.

Anyone want to know where to find some primo kiddie porn? Ask everyone’s favourite uber-pedophile Stephen Conroy and his buddies at ACMA. Their secret stash has been made not-so-secret anymore by the fine freedom-loving folk at WikiLeaks. Says Senator Shitheel:

“No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.”

I don’t know about that. From earlier in the article:

“The list itself should concern every Australian - although plenty of the material is unsavoury or even illegal, the presence of sites like YouTube, MySpace, gambling or even Christian sites on the list raises a lot of questions,” [Colin Jacobs, EFA] said.

Cue bleating insistence from Conroy that by the time the list affects all of Australia it will be pruned to only the kiddie porn they insist the list is for, and won’t also block sites that are objectionable to the moralist assholes who have sway with the stuffed shirts who run the country.

I suppose I’m not interested in “cyber safety” though. Partly because anyone using the word “cyber” should not be trusted. Mostly however it’s because I don’t think the Internet should be made kid-safe at the sake of adult freedom. If parents don’t want their kids to see “bad” content, parents can supervise their children.

This program is not about “cyber safety” however. It can’t be, because it does not limit access to the objectionable content. It is about the Labor Party buying the votes of lazy, paranoid parents who are convinced that the world is out to corrupt their sweet, innocent little lambs of god. And if the last election went the other way, it would be about the Liberal Party doing the same. They’re all a bunch of morally corrupt whores.

Except for Nick Xenophon. Turns out the only person I voted for at the last election might not actually have shit for brains. For now.

Robert Mugabe is reported to own long-lost episodes of Doctor Who.

The President of Zimbabwe apparently possesses tapes of some early episodes of the science fiction series that could be thirty or forty years old, according to The Sun.

The Sun wouldn’t make something like this up would they?

So the NSW Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, has decided that MMOs are illegal in Australia. I put forward that the reason Mr. Kelly is so insistent on demonising games such as Warhammer Online or World of Warcraft is that he was recently busted having cyber sex with a Night Elf chick who turned out to be a dude. It’s the only scenario that makes any sense.

Actually there could be a couple of things going on here. The NSW MfP’s argument is that since these games don’t carry any classification, selling them is illegal. I looked it up in the OFLC database, and these games are indeed unclassified. The relevant industry association contends that since the games have no single-player component, classification is not required. These are the basic facts of the situation, and they’re undisputed.

The argument for not classifying these games (which I agree with) is that since all online interactions depend upon the unpredictable behaviour of other players, classifying a game based upon all possible activities in the game would be unfeasible. At the very least, all games which included unrestricted text chat could be held liable for the behaviour of filthy government ministers and their disgusting elf fetish. The model the ESRB in the US follows is that while the scripted, single-player components of games are rated, online interactions are not, for the mentioned reasons.

An optimistic assessment of this fiasco is that by calling for retailers to be reported for selling these items, the NSW Minister for Police is doing a sensible thing, essentially calling for reform of federal classification laws. This reform is desperately needed. Much as I’d like to think highly of our leaders (well not specifically my leaders - I’m a South Australian and this asshole is in New South Wales), I don’t find this plausible.

MMOs have been on sale in this country for a very long time now. Warcraft, the biggest game of the genre, went on sale here in late 2004. Warhammer Online went on sale late 2008, and that game runs servers in this country. I don’t think EA (or their local surrogates) would invest in that infrastructure without checking to see whether they were entering into a criminal enterprise.

No, what I think is going on here is misguided moralism. Game retailers are not breaking the law, and I expect any pending lawsuits to prove this. Well unless we get similarly misguided moralists as judges in those cases. So I guess we’re fucked. What I see going on here is the same reactionary nonsense that went on 30 years ago over Dungeons & Dragons. Misguided moralists pissed off not by a minor legal quibble, but by the general content of these games and the continued misconception that - like cartoons and comic books - “games are for kids”.

Gizmodo “editorial director” Brian Lam decides he can have it both ways. He’s just now recognising that feverish speculation over someone’s health is ghoulish. Welcome to the human race, asshole.

Running through my logs, I just found this post I made back in September. I was a miserable twat. It since turns out Genius is an excellent way to quickly generate a decent playlist on the go - no more dealing with On The Go, which is an even more frustrating experience on the iPod touch.

The fear of every writer is that they might one day become Lawrence Miles.

Congratulations! 2008 was the Year of Linux on the Desktop. All it took was severely torturing what “Linux on the Desktop” means.

Raw footage of Richard Dawkins’ interview with Derren Brown, discussing amongst other things the technique of cold reading and how it is abused by some to bestow upon themselves the glamour of supernatural abilities. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

The Dishonourable, Unqualified Stephen Conroy in a posting on a government website, which I refuse to call a blog you right-wing twit:

The Government understands that ISP-level filtering is not a ‘silver bullet’. We have always viewed ISP-level filtering as one part of a broader government initiative for protecting our children online.

Emphasis mine. The point keeps getting raised by those in favour of the proposed censorship of the Internet that it will “protect the children”. Under this guise, (probably) well-meaning groups who actually are concerned over child welfare are dragged in to support the scheme. They don’t understand the details of the problem beyond “There’s kiddie porn out there!” and they do not understand the supposed solution to the problem being discussed here, so all they are is clueless mouthpieces for the government. They let themselves down, and they let down the people they’re trying to protect.

The proposed filter does not protect children, and the government knows it. They’ve known since February. It is $44 million spent to shore up Labor’s votes in the next election.

Besides the over-reaching ignorance on display here, the truly infuriating thing about the flawed argument being put forth is that it (deliberately, of course) lumps opponents of the scheme in with advocates of child pornography. It’s the classic ploy of an asshole: “You don’t…. hate children… do you?” Stephen Conroy, if it weren’t already clear, is an asshole. He is trading on deliberate falsehoods and manipulation. These are perhaps his only qualifications for being our federal Communications Minister. It seems to be a tradition to have the most clueless twits elected to be appointed to that office.

Since our esteemed asshole of a minister seems so fond of weaselly words, lets see where this can go. Let us assume that this isn’t just a cynical ploy to grab the votes of uneducated, paranoid parents around the country. Let us assume that the scheme will actually protect children. No more will any child (or adult) in this country have to worry about seeing material the government finds “objectionable”. Huzzah. Glory day.

Except someone somewhere is seeing this content. Someone has to maintain the secret blacklist. Presumably the final authority on this blacklist will be the Communications minister. I think it all becomes clear here. It isn’t that the Communications Minister is against the proliferation of child pornography in Australia (on the Internet). It’s that he wants it all for himself.

Stephen Conroy loves kiddie porn. The evidence is clear. There is no other logical excuse for his plan. After all, if he actually hated the stuff he’d be doing something constructive, instead of instituting the greatest abridgment of free speech in Australia’s history.

via.

Every day my bus trip to university takes me past an Edge church. The location of this particular Edge church is both painful and hilarious. Prior to the arrival of this not-at-all-creepy franchise church, this building was the Investigator Science & Technology Center, a pretty cool place for school kids to learn and get excited about science. Now it’s a church. Hilarious.

Edge Church International (can’t you just feeeel God’s love in the name?) was founded by Danny Guglielmucci. It’s a member of Australian Christian Churches, like Hillsong and The Compound. Turns out Mr. Guglielmucci’s son Michael has been getting into a little trouble. He told people he had a terminal illness. On the back of this claim he released a single. Turns out he was full of shit.

It’s okay though, the explanation actually makes a lot of sense. Michael Guglielmucci doesn’t have cancer, he’s just addicted to porn. That’s why he said he had cancer. Porn addiction. That’s why he went around with oxygen tubes in his nose. Porn addiction. That’s why he led his family to believe that he was dying. Porn addiction.

I’m pretty sure the porn industry would like to tell Guglielmucci - both the lying dipshit of a son and the father who tosses off this explanation as if it makes a lick of sense - to go fuck himself. Maybe he can watch some more porn to get some ideas.

In This American Life #338: The Spokesman Jon Ronson talks to Rachel North about her experience having her own existence denied by a bunch of delusional conspiracy theorist (tautological, I apologise).

There is actually no more suitable response to the “if you think suicide bombers did this, you’re racist” than “oh, fuck off.” Well done to TAL for keeping it in.

I could rattle on for a few hundred words about how sick I am of the political attitude that conjures up such bullshit as 2009: A True Story, but I haven’t watched past the first two minutes of the first episode, and I don’t want to watch past the first two minutes of the first episode, so I’ll try to maintain a little intellectual honesty and just leave it at this:

Everybody, just stop it with the “scanlines = video!” bullshit. We all know what video looks like. We all know what TV looks like. We all see it every day. It does not look like that.