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Sunday June 15, 2008

MPAA, Movies and Me.

In a recent proposal to the FCC, the MPAA has signaled its intent to exert greater control over the way in which we interact with its products: movies. Whilst some are crying foul of this, is it really a step in the right or wrong direction?

Consider for a moment that for an adult to attend the movies, in the cinemas, the cost is somewhere between $10 and $20 for a ticket. You end up in a seat that may (or may not) be perfect for watching it (some seats are more equal than others) on the big screen and being able to experience the movie the way it was intended - on the big screen - complete with sound effects, etc. It is my opinion that this is the only venue worth paying such a fee to be entertained by a movie - unless you've got $100,000 to $500,000 to build a dedicated home theatre room (bear in mind you've got to have a room dedicated to do this to do it properly.) That leaves DVDs, often costing $30 to $40 or more, somewhere in the wild. But why do we buy DVDs? To watch a movie at our leisure. I'll add that buying movies is different to buying music because you can enjoy music while you're doing other activities, such as eating, cooking, cleaning, reading, programming, gardenning, etc. Movies you need to make time to watch. This leads me on to the next point.

When we purchase a DVD, we purchase the ability to watch a movie whenever we want, as often as we want. It is my personal experience that most DVDs sit on the shelf or in the cabinet for some large amount of time after we've watched it once or twice before it gets viewed again. I say "most" quite deliberately because there are always some that we watch more than once and when bought for kids, they may be watched many times. But if we are to stop and think about it, do we get our money's worth out of the DVDs we buy? Is the convenience to watch a movie once or twice worth that much? Especially given that today, DVD movies come packed with adverts and banner messages that we must endure to get to the main event - unless we have a device such as Kaleidescape's movie player where we upload movies and can then access them directly (no banners!) - but they're not cheap and have earned the ire of Hollywood.

So convenience is of value to us but now that we have high definition TV content and HDTVs, so is higher quality content. Consider that once a movie is released on DVD, its value to TV stations is diminished and this is the current pattern: cinemas, DVDs then broadcast television. If the last two are reversed and movies are broadcast with high definition content via your cable or satellite broadcaster, then the use of DVRs to store a movie has the potential to make it easy for movie pirates to transfer the content to a DVD (or the Internet) and rob the studios of revenue. Not an attractive thought, for them, so they'd like to disable the DVR recording capability. Good? Bad? Hmmm. If my opportunities to watch a movie are limited to the times at which they're played then yes, it is bad, but if I have video on demand, what's the problem - as long as it is priced reasonably.

And this is the rub. Apple has shown that if you price music at an attractive level, then people have no problems buying it in digital form. We've yet to see that approach for movies and we must consider, what is a movie worth to watch? Does one assume that there will always be more than 1 person watching it thus justifying a price tag of $10 or more to watch it now rather than wait for the DVD or broadcast, free-to-air, tv? But if you wanted to watch it now, wouldn't you just cough up the cash to watch it at the cinemas? (I know that's what I do!)

The downloading of movies from the Internet is attractive for a couple of reasons:

• price - it is perceived to be free but in all seriousness, one needs to break up the cost of the internet connection and electricity, not to mention the DVD disc it is burnt to (and perhaps your time) and apportion some of that to find the true cost of a downloaded DVD movie. It might not be $10, but it is definately not $0.
• giving it to the man - it gives the little guy a chance to thumb his nose at the big guy (the movie houses)
• convenience - quite often the movies in DVD format on the Internet are free of banners and adverts that get in your way of watching the movie, thus the person watching the movie feels like they're watching the movie, rather than being spammed with advertising junk.

Looking at that list, the MPAA and its cohorts should be able to spot something of value: convenience but only if it is priced right.

In May last year, Arstechnica ran a story on Comcast working on a simultaneous movie release service that would cost between $30 and $50 per film. This is an indication of someone not understanding what the price should be but now that we're 1 year on and the MPAA is talking to the FCC about DVR interaction with content for HDTV, maybe it has been slowly cooking in the background. Hmmm. Some of the comments doing the rounds on various websites are that if this model works then it might become a preferential venue to cinemas and lead to more cinemas closing. But if that happened, there would be no opening night, no red carpet and no celebrities in public. Significant? Maybe not, but those things do add a certain buzz to movies being released.

At the price of around $0.99 or so per movie, pay per view kind of makes sense - so long as you can pause it while you answer the door to pay for the pizza or visit the bathroom (or some other high priority interrupt such as your parents Email/Internet isn't working and you're their helpdesk.) If you can't do that, well, what's the point of watching it at home? Now if said movie comes with ads and other junk at the front, I'm not likely to be interested but how much extra would I pay to not have them present? Now that's something to think about. Well, after some quick thinking, anywhere from $1 to $2. So now my somewhat old movie, say Star Wars or Lord of the Rings, is going to cost me $2 or $3 to sit down with my friends or girlfriend or whoever for a couple of hours. In doing so, I've saved the movie house fabrication costs of the DVD, printing costs for the DVD, distribution costs of the DVD and possibly promotion and other bits and pieces. You can see now why it is beneficial for Amazon and TiVO to get together in this market.

The key to all of this is the cost to watch the movie - it has to be priced such that I won't think that maybe I should wait for the DVD or some other avenue. While this might upset a lot of people, if movies came as self-destruct entities (they will play from start to end, once), this probably takes care of a large segment of the market. The care that needs to be taken here is to make sure that consumers understand they're buying a right to view the movie, much like they buy a movie ticket, on one occasion, not that they're buying the movie to own/use. The wrinkle in the plan of only viewing it once is the unpredictable reliability of the system that the consumer is using. At $30-$50, a failure of their system that interrupted play and destroyed their one-time token would cause a lot of complaints. At $3, it becomes less of a concern - so long as the failure rate is very low (lets say under 5%.)

So in pursuing the right to restrict DVR usage with HD content on new releases, I think the MPAA is taking some good steps down the road of a sensible business model - so long as they price it right and properly educate people that they're doing something similar to buying a movie ticket but in their own home. If it is then priced appropriately (learn from Apple!), they might just have a winner...

Friday June 06, 2008

Has Google become too popular?

Tonight, as I'm searching for something very specific on the Internet, Google is being singularly unhelpful. I look at the first page of what it has listed and, in my mind, none of them have anything to do with what it is I'm seeking. For example, I'm looking for something about some posters in Australia, so I click on "pages from Australia" (because I specifically went to "www.google.com.au") and what is the first url returned in my list: www.vandersomething.net. Hosted in and about someone in California. I mean w.t.f?

Another pet peeve of mine is that from time to time, when I do a search, my results are cluttered by "ebay things". Hello google, if I wanted to search for things on auction at ebay, I'd go and visit ebay.

So I'm left wondering, is Google now too successful to continue to be the great search engine it once was (and thus will become more yahoo like over time)? Or did that happen some time ago and that it is only the simple searches that I've been doing since that have hidden this from me?

Wednesday May 28, 2008

Americans getting on 2 wheels in favour of 4

In a story titled "No Radical Change Yet", Jim mentioned that Americans are still getting to work the same as they have been. Alas, there is already a change in the works: people are buying scooters to replace the car as the means to get to work. While there has been more coverage of this recently (see below), the issue first popped into the papers back in 2004 - "U.S. Scooter Sales Thriving With Gas Prices High".

So change is afoot, as evidenced by just this story, Vespa sales are on the rise, where a local Vespa dealer (in Ohio) has sold as many scooters in one month (April 2008) as he did in all of 2007. And it is happening throughout the country - Milwaukee: Vespa Scooter Sales Soaring On High Gas Prices.

But there's one other catch here: the sales, at present, are all occurring during the American spring/summer. In some of these states, such as WI and OH, use of the scooter during the colder months comes with additional challenges: the roads are more slipery and you're more exposed to the elements.

All figures below are in US Dollars.

So what are the economics involved? If the car is kept and the scooter added to the stable, there's an outlay of around $2000-$4500, depending on the model of scooter and local taxes. You may also need to get a motor cycle licence (add in some lessons plus the cost of the test.) For the sake of simplicity, lets say that the new price of super-inflated fuel for your car is $4/gl and the old "ok" pice is $2.50/gl. Some people report spending $80/week (vs $50) with the new prices, for me, it is now around $50 (vs $31.) For those now spending $80, the additional outlay is $1500/year. Given that the price will not go down between now and 2016 (8 years), the simple math is to say $32,000 is the cost of fuel over the that period. If a Vespa can do a week of travelling for $10 where the car is $80, that's a saving of around $3500/year, assmuing that maintenance costs are the same (and they may not be) - see below. Insurance also needs to come into play here, but I have no idea what this will be nor do I have any worthwhile references. To cut to the chase, the $4500 scooter may take upto 2 years to break even in cost effectiveness if the price of fuel remains the same. If the price of gas continues to increase, and there is no reason to suspect it won't, then the time frame for cost recovery comes in. If you can sell the car and live with only a scooter, then the equation shifts dramatically in favour of the scooter. (Corrections made)

But it isn't necessarily a bed of roses either, as one owner in San Francisco has found out, with their blog "Vespa Lx150 total cost of ownership". And lets not forget something else very important - safety.

References:

• High gas prices are driving scooter sales up
• Some are enjoying high gas prices
• ( May 28 2008, 02:52:12 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

Saturday May 24, 2008

Is America ready for what's coming?

This morning over breakfast, I heard a cook in a restaurant comment that a large container cooking oil had risen in price from around $13 to over $60 and that a bag of flour and risen from $8 to over $30 (if I heard right and a blog post here seems to suggest it's not far wrong.) Last year the minimum wage went up about 12% and this year it is set to do the same ($5.85 (2006) -> $7.25 (2008)) In a recent article in a Nevada newspaper, the state was casting doubts over its wage rise for state workers due to a drop in its revenue - a cost of living increase of 4%. Question is, how would those people make do without it?

What's the root cause? Hard to say. The price of gas is not tipped to drop until at least 2016 as the futures market for oil has already sold supply to that date at current prices. But maybe that is a dream and the more realistic picture is the price of oil is not ever going to go down to where it was. The oil honeymoon is over.

So what has this got to do with the title? America, as a nation, runs on oil. There are a few hold out examples, such as New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco (city area only) that have functional mass transit systems. Expand the view to, for example, the entire San Francisco Bay Area, to places such as Silicon Valley, San Jose, there is barely any worthwhile public transport. Now get out to some of the other populous cities, such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, etc, there is a bus system that kind of works, but anything else...where's your car man?

It would seem that the basic cost of a lot of things is going to rise this year and next, perhaps pushing many into poverty. But something that cannot be missed is the amount of money that these rises are going to take away from the average person on the street, giving them less discretionary spending. This won't necessarily show up in the US GDP figures, as people will still be spending the same (or more) money but the fraction that goes to transport and food will increase, meaning something else will have to give.

A shift away from driving (too expensive) and maybe smaller portions of food (keeping cost dost.) Is America ready for that? Or will it go for the same size food portions, albeit more expensive, and find more fuel efficient vehicles and keep on polluting?

For further reading:

• The Market Begins to Believe in Peak Oil
• Why Crude Oil price is zooming
• FACTS ON POLICY: Consumer Spending

Thursday May 01, 2008

Recovering postgres data

For a while now I've been toying around with postgres at home and from time to time, I seem to have reliability problems. Those problems do not appear to be postgres's, rather it is likely they are due to the operating system (NetBSD) or hardware (a small & cheap HP box.) Whatever the cause, what I see is postgres refusing to access data because an index file is borked or some other internal meta data file is borked and it refuses to load any data. My data was there but it wouldn't give me access. Grrrr....

With files of a couple of gigabytes in size (yeah, small, I know), it seemed obvious that the data was still there - somewhere. Using some standard tools such as strings and hexdump showed that the data was all there, intact, I just need to work out how to get it out of the files. With some experimentation, I had managed to work out a good amount of how it worked but still ran into a few problems. Then I saw a pointer to another utility, pg_filedump, that worked on the data/index files in postgres. The key to making real progress was looking at the header files for postgres that defined its data file formats. I had, up until this point, been refusing to do this, intent on reverse engineering as much of the data format as I could (this was to make the task challenging - just looking at the source code seemed like cheating.) After finding the header files, I started over and life was a bit easier.

The result has been something of a success. Not being content with the easy sailing, I've left priting out tuple data to what I could make sense of in the binary files. The only important types I haven't been able to decode yet are time, timestamp and date.

There is a bold warning at the top of the man page in this file for a very good reason: if the database has crashed and will not start up, there is no way of knowing what the status of your data really is. In a risk free environment, you would recover data from backups and rebuild the database from that point. This program requires you to make an educated guess about the sanity and correctness of the data that it retrieves: if you want to reuse it. i.e. no dba worth anything would ever use this with production data - that's what backups and application log files are for.

Saturday March 08, 2008

This Republican Government Supports Torture

In the week just past, the Congress of the United States approved a bill that would ban the practice of "water boarding" as it set guidelines for how the CIA is allowed to interrogate people.

As a show of support for what Congress and the people of the United States of America want, the President of the United States, George Bush, promptly veoted the bill, saying that it would make it harder for the CIA and others to collect information. Or to put it simply, the current President of the United States supports the torture of people in order to get them to speak.

When combatting people, such as terrorists (or bullies) who adopt low standards in order to achieve their outcomes, the challenge is not to sink to their level in order to face them in combat for doing so gives them victory without a punch even being thrown.

Congratulations America, you've got a President who wants to drag your country back to the middle ages.

In November this year, the American people will be asked to vote for which party they want to lead the country. Lets hope that they can choose a party that respects human life and is in concert with what others around the world expect and believe on important issues such as this.

Bush Vetoes Bill Baning Waterboarding

Saturday January 26, 2008

Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid

Fresh from trying to get into the APEC, Chaser went to the USA and interviewed random Americans... occassionally there was a glimmer of intelligence but on the whole, it wasn't very convincing.

To be fair, I can imagine there would be parts of Australia (and most likely other "modern" countries (such as England)) where there was a similar level of ignorance of world events, but no other "modern" country goes to the lengths that America does to assert how good it is.

Video clip: Why People Believe Americans Are Stupid.

Thursday January 24, 2008

Catches win matches

From longer ago than I can remember, the phrase "catches win matches" became associated with cricket and for a good while, Australia (as a team) was always converting a high percentage of the catches into wickets. In the first innings of the test at Adelaide this year against India, 6 catche were put down.

While they might be in the doldrums at present after being given a hiding in Perth, if they can't get their act together and hold onto the ball when it comes their way, then they're not going to win matches either. Obviously a few lads need to spend more time remembering how to catch the ball!

America, Australia, Creationism

The history of the human race is a topical discussion in many circles, with debates over creationism, intelligent design and evolution.

In comparing notes with some other Australians who had visited the USA recently, it became evident that indeed, creationism is involved. And that more over, that the North American way of life was not the final product.

In thinking this through over dinner, it became clear that whoever did create human life has been evolving their product for some time. Let me explain.

We theorise that human life arose from humble beginnings in the forests of Africa somewhere, giving birth to a primitive society. We might say that around the time of 1AD the first alpha version of human life and society had been deployed throughout Europe and Asia. The corollorary of this is that society in other parts of the world is considered a pre-alpha release.

Our creator knew that this wasn't good enough but was content to let it evolve. Over the next 1400 years, the alpha version of human society slowly but surely evolved into a beta product throughout Europe, involving many wars, diseases and so on. By the 15th centur it became clear that the beta version had undergone significant evolution and was primed to be tested as a new release candidate. Lo and behold, America was founded.

With the discovery of the new world by Christopher Columbus, our creator was given a relatively clean slate through which the first version of modern society could be deployed. During the following 300 to 400 years, North America evolved in version 1.0 of human society. Not bad for a first release but still not quite there.

In the second half of the 18th century, Captain Cook discovered Australia and New Zealand (the latter of which is often referred to as God's own country.) Hidden from the rest of the world for many millenia, again a new slate was laid bare for society to begin again with.

With the chance to start over, our creator set about their work to improve what they'd achieved with America, deploying version 2.0 of human society. The end result is easy to see - when travelling, Australians are for the most part welcome in every port with their good nature and friendliness. The way of life is by and large modern, with a few monolithic stalwarts, and relaxed, with no pressure to be anything specific, except happy.

While this may seem somewhat contraversial, it does fit with observations that while American life is good, it isn't quite right. There are a few things wrong in various places. As we all know, it is often difficult to apply patches to fix specific problems (look at what happened with prohibition!) so it has been left alone, to run its course and slowly evolve through the version 1.x versions. For the most part, Australia seems to have learnt from many of the American misakes (well up until we elected John Howard) and made substantial improvements in the say of life.

This theory can be used to explain the problems with democracy in Iraq quite well. The Americans went into Iraq, expecting to be able to upgrade the beta version of society to their latest 1.x version. However their was insufficient planning and preparation of the upgrade, resulting in a project that is running way over budget and looking a lot like a failure.

For any Americans who don't quite see how this could be possible, my suggestion is simple: spend a year or two living in Australia.

So what about Asia? It would seem that Asia rejected the beta version that was spreading rapidly through Europe and stuck with alpha 2. So too did South America. The greater parts of Africa (and also the indigenous Australians) failed to apply the upgrade that introduced the first alpha version.

P.S. This document is a work in progress, lets say version 0.1, with further refinement in various areas necessary.

Sunday January 06, 2008

Umpires and cricket.

Over the preceding 5 days, Australia played India in a cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) and while Australia won, the best summary I've seen of the 2nd test match is:

Caught Benson, Bowled Bucknor

Who are Benson and Bucknor? The two umpires appointed to adjudicate on decisions throughout the match. The umpires are appointed for the match by the International Cricket Council (ICC) and are from the countries of England and Jamaica respectively.

It is a great shame for any sport when the actions of the umpires and the decisions they make overshadow the talent and endevours of the players on the field. In Australia, football umpires are often lovingly referred to as White maggots. It appears we need to come up with an appropriate term for cricket umpires too.

As is often the case in life, people are prone to speculate about what if. The only conclusion that can be safely drawn, on reflection, is that if any particular decision is/was made is changed then everything that follows must be different. You cannot change individual events in life and expect all the others to be as they were. The joining together of events in space and time is known as the Butterfly Effect, about which a movie was made in 2004. If you haven't seen this movie, I'd recommend making the time to do so. Stop worrying about the past and focus on the present and future.

The teaching of foreign languages

During high school, I studied two very different foreign languages (French and Japanese) and in more recent times, I've been lucky enough to be in the right place and time to make some basic steps in another two very different languages: Czech and Chinese. But rather than compare the languages themselves, I'd like to reflect on how they get taught through looking at how the respective textbooks approach the problem.

The aim of learning French was quite simple: to make it possible for you to go there and speak the language as a tourist in order to achieve simple things - ask where something is, what the time is, how much, etc. Japanese was not taught in this manner but I no longer have those textbooks to examine how it was done (unfortunately the end of highschool was celebrated by some amount of book burning, much to my shame.)

When I look at the textbooks I have today for Czech and Chinese, there is similar disparity, to the point where the Czech textbooks look like they've been written for people who will need to use the language vs the Chinese textbooks that look like they're written for business people. How stark the difference is can be see in the first lesson: in the Chinese textbook, it talks about company names and what country the company comes from vs the Czech textbook is greetings, including how are you. The difference in themes continues into both books - beer/coffee appears in lesson 1 for Czech but lesson 4 for Chinese.

Does the differing approach make much difference? Yes - in a very short span of time (1 lesson), it is possible to learn enough Czech to go to a cafe/restaurant and ask for food/drink. It takes considerably more lessons with the Chinese textbook. And in reflection, the difference feels much like it did when learning French and Japanese. Why does this difference exist? I can't say. Perhaps it is cultural, I can't say, as I don't know enough about the Chinese culture to know the significance of what is taught early on. There are no such problems with Czech - in a country that has some quite excellent beers, learning the Czech word for beer is very important, probably like wine for French.

In closing, I'll mention one other prominent difference between the two textbooks: use of the language you're learning. In the Czech textbook, there's an table at the front that tells you what various words mean in English. In every chapter, those words are used in place of the English words for "Read", "Write", "Listen", etc. The Czech textbook forces you to learn Czech in order to use it and uses it throughout. The Chinese textbook makes no such attempt as even at the end of the book, the word "Sentences" is still there in English at the beginning of the chapter. While I don't recall the approach Japanese textbooks took, from memory the French ones did approach things from the same angle as the Czech one does. One is given to wonder if there is some deeper cultural difference in the way people view Asian languages should be taught vs European languages.

Addendum

I suppose I should add a note here about which method I prefer. Without a doubt, the European approach for teaching language is vastly superior to that I've experienced for Asian languages. Granted there is a new form of writing to learn with Asian languages that can be a steep learning curve, and with Chinese, tones, but then there is verb tenses with the Romantic/Latin/Slavic languages and then the modal twist as well (of which Czech is the worst with 7 cases.)

Friday December 21, 2007

Music and video priacy now 'legal' in Antigua

In a strange twist of events where the WTO found in favour of Antigua vs the USA (with respect to online gambling), Antigua has now been given the right to ignore intellectual property and copyright rights owned by the USA. Or to summarise in a moe practical sense: if you're into pirating movies/music and need a safe haven from the MPAA/RIAA, Antigua is now your home.

In reading the findings of this case, it is very hard to not come to the conclusion that two of the three panellists are in the pocket of (or owned by) the USA. If the WTO is supposed to be an international organisation that is impartial, it needs to be able to make substantial findings against anyone - including the USA.

Of course the USA isn't taking this laying down, they're pushing for gambling services to be excluded from its WTO commitments. The word protectionist comes to mind.

References

• http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/21/antigua_us/
• http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hK0rIeo9wzXhQ1LnVyzXLy53BtkgD8TLUQDG0

Thursday December 06, 2007

The US credit squeeze and its global impact.

6-12-2008

• Bush offers homeowners 5year rate freeze
• Bush to freeze interest rates for subprime victims
• Battle Lines Drawn Over Mortgage Plan

The credit squeeze in the USA is on the verge of pulling the American economy down into recession and in a bid to avoid this outcome, the Bush Administration is making noises about stepping in to protect mortgage borrowers in the USA from a spike in interest rates. But, you've got to ask yourself, why is this necessary? And what are the long term problems here?

a large number of mortgages in the USA are taken out with a short fixed term that has a low interest rate, after which the rate becomes variable. The problem this creates is that only the initial phase of the mortgage can be afforded by the consumer - when the low interest period ends, repayments go up and affordability of the loan becomes a problem. That this problem has arisen should be sending a very big signal to the finance sector in the USA: this model is flawed and is incredibly dangerous.

So the President stepping in here and protecting consumers from an upswing in interest rate on their mortgage that they won't be able to service, is actually an act of protecting a flawed business model employed by the financial institutions. The action here just pushes the problem out to the future for someone else to deal with. Freezing the current interest level for certain buyers, for a few years does nothing to increase the ability of the consumer to actually service the loan. But with his tax cuts and other irresponsible fiscal policies, this move should come as no surprise.

There's a double whammy here for consumers: their financial institution has given them a loan which they can service during the honeymoon period but cannot after that ends. Amongst the other outcomes, this will negatively impact consumers' credit rating, making future loans more expensive as the interest rate for loans is indexed on credit rating (but that's a completely seperate problem.)

Criticism of Bush's plan isn't limited to folks like myself. Others, such as Pimco's portfolio manager are also criticising the move. An indication of the view that this is a vote buying exercise is Senator Hillary Clinton's jumping on this bandwagon and saying Bush isn't doing enough. If anything it should be comforting that both political parties (and their leaders) seem to be no wiser than the other.

Has the US credit problem impacted Australia? Yes! One of the cheaper non-bank providers of home loans, RAMS, has this year been bought out by a bank as they found themselves in an unfavourable position: they had been buying cheap credit in the USA and with the exchange rate moving against them, their costs went up. Rather than increase the cost of their loans (by increasing the mortgage repayment %) to consumers, they sunk the company.

Update (7/12/2008)

Today I found an excellent article in The Age explaining the situation and how the subprime American loans are affecting people in Australia: When California Quakes, Beaumaris Shudders. I'd recommend this article to everyone who has a home loan today as it walks through in almost layman friendly terms how the problem started and how it is affecting everyone today.

The picture now being painted of this crisis in the USA is becoming progressively worse, with some referring to it as hurricane katrina fro the financial market. What picture does this paint for 2008? Hard to tell. The aforementioned article is predicting a significant slide on Wall Street. But one thing is for sure: the financial markets do not like this move by the current president of the USA.

Kangaroo farts could fight global warming: scientists

With our illustrious Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, signing up to the Kyoto Protocol to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, the focus is now on how to get there. Fresh of the starting block is this story "Kangaroo farts could fight global warming: scientists" from the ABC. How will this turn out? Who knows! Maybe cows will be alergic to the bacteria from kangaroos or it will have some other strange side effect, other than the one intended. But this isn't the only way in which the kangaroo can help fight greenhouse gas emissions.

Using kangaroo meat as an alternative to beef is not new. In October of this year, Greenpace was urging kangaroo consumption as a means to cut back on beef production in light of the contributions of that industry to methane production.

However it isn't smooth sailing to get here. In Australia, there is vigorous dicussion (the picture in that story being a good example of how many Australians feel) about the pro's and con's of "eating skippy" - or rather, eating our national emblem.

But if in harvesting more kangaroos allows us to reduce the number of head of cattle, surely we should "think global and act local"?

Sunday November 25, 2007

Does the leader of your country speak fluent Mandarin?

ON the weekend just past, Australia went to the polls to vote for who should form the federal government of our country. The result? Another member of the axis of fools (Blair, Bush, Howard & ...) has fallen by the way, presenting Australia with a new leader - Kevin Rudd.

Amongst the many articles being written about this outcome over the weekend, comes this blog entry - John Howard, Australia and the world. In the final paragraph it mentions something that could significantly change the way in which Australia interacts with Asia: the Primeminister elect of Australia speaks fluent Mandarin.

Of course, this isn't exactly news. In 2004, the ABC presented a profile of Kevin Rudd. How well does our Primeminister elect speak Chinese? There's a sample on youtube here.