SemiArticulate

I was perusing the onion the other day, and found an article that reminded me of the ACL and Senator Conroy’s committment to ‘evidence based policy’.

Life imitating Art? As usual, the Onion is all TIC!.

** WARNING KEYBOARD ALERT **

Oh, No! It’s Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run!

ACT Senator Kate Lundy (ALP) is getting more feedback on the ill conceived internet censorship policy. Her original blogpost was informative, as was all the feed back given.

One thing that stood out was her understanding that the mandatory nature of the censorship proposal was a election promise, and the subsequent objections were a mere misunderstanding of the promise.

In other words, there was an ambivalent reaction to the policy at the time of the election policy because it was not understood to be a mandatory filter for the general population.

Unfortunately the wording of the under-reported policy doesn’t support her understanding. We got exactly the meaning of the promise.

The offending wording is (from this ALP policy document from 2007 on page 5):

A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries.

The use of the word ‘offer’, combined with ‘accessible by children’ would indicate it was very optional to childless homes, and optional to all areas.

I do understand the drafters may have intention of having mandatory, but the wording doesn’t bear that out. It may be the usual political use of weasal words to prevent them from being pinned to what they said, but unfortunately it has backfired.

I do hope that the good Senator does listen to the people she is supposed to represent, and vote against this policy. Both in the Labor caucus, and on the Senate floor (regardless of caucus outcome). I for one will not vote for, or give preferences to the ALP if this policy comes into effect.

As reported in The Australian, the ACMA has issued a takedown notice to an ISP for a LINK to a website that is on it’s unwanted (potentially prohibited content) list, that is going to be the backbone of the government’s mandatory censorship scheme.

This is after the “good” senator promised that political content would not be blocked.

More at the EFA

As an act of civil disobedience, I’ll post the link here.

** WARNING ** WARNING ** the images on the following page are quite vile and disgusting, and I don’t think it is appropriate for anyone. It contains images of supposedly aborted fetuses. Don’t look at it if you are a bit queasy.

http://www.abortiontv.com/Pics/AbortionPictures6.htm

I’ve finally updated wordpress to 2.7. Hopefully nothing breaks.

From http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1071642&p=7#r129

Five surgeons are discussing who has the best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon says, “I like to see accountants on my
operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.”

The second responds, “Yeah, but you should try electricians!
Everything inside them is color coded.”

The third surgeon says, “No, I really think librarians are the
best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.”

The fourth surgeon chimes in: “You know, I like construction
workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over
at the end, And when the job takes longer than you said it would.”

But the fifth surgeon shut them all up when he observed: “You’re
all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no
heart, no balls, no brains and no spine. Best of all: the head and the butt
are interchangeable.